Some Prefer Nettles (Paperback, New Ed)

The dilatory dilemma of Kaname and Misako serves to point up not only the disaffection of a marriage - but of a culture, in which the new ways of the western world, in contemporary Japan, have intruded on the old traditions of the East. For Kaname and Misako have acquired a modern outlook and for some time have equivocated and deliberated over the divorce they should secure since Kaname has found that his passion has cooled, and, with his encouragement, Misako has taken a lover. Visits with Misako's father only confirm the discrepancies between the generations for the old man has taken a young girl as a concubine and groomed her to minister to his inclinations, with the traditional, submissive rituals, and it is he who attempts to return Kaname and Misako to an acceptance of each other and also of an established and unquestioning pattern. A satiric fable which, if diffident, is poised and precise. (Kirkus Reviews)

Generally considered one of Tanizaki's finest works Some Prefer Nettles deals with the ramifications of a collapsing marriage. Kaname seeks escape from his vacuous domestic existence in the arms of a beautiful Eurasian, and closes his eyes to the possibility that his wife may take a lover. His father-in-law is a bourgeois of the old school, civilised, refined, trained in the elegant ambiguities of an ancient tradition.

Instinctively the old man divines that his daughter's marriage has failed because the young couple have cut themselves off from the traditional Japanese roots of aesthetic and emotional fulfilment, and he tries to repair the breach by leading them back to the classical arts of the country. Beneath the calm, if shadowed, surface of the narrative there runs a violent and absorbing conflict between the debilitating indecision of the husband and the devious scheming of the older man.

General

Imprint:	Vintage Classics
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	February 2001
Authors:	Jun'ichiro Tanizaki
Dimensions:	198 x 129 x 10mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	160
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-09-928337-9
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-09-928337-9
Barcode:	9780099283379

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