The Temple of Dawn - (Vintage International) by Yukio Mishima (Paperback)

About the Book

The story of one man expending his spirit between obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and an equally passionate search for mystical enlightenment, The Temple of Dawn powerfully dramatizes the Japanese experience from the eve of World War II through the degradation of the postwar era. Third in The Sea of Fertility tetralogy.

Book Synopsis

The third novel in the masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, in which a brilliant lawyer will go to nearly any length to discover whether a young Thai princess is in fact the reincarnated spirit of his childhood friend. - "Surpassingly chilling, subtle, and original." --The New York Times

Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend. Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess--an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomes the story of one man's obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment.

Review Quotes

"Surpassingly chilling, subtle and original."
--The New York Times

"[Mishima's] Sea of Fertility tetralogy. . . shines ever more obviously as one of the great works of the last century."
--William Vollman

About the Author

YUKIO MISHIMA was born in Tokyo in 1925. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University's School of Jurisprudence in 1947. His first published book, The Forest in Full Bloom, appeared in 1944 and he established himself as a major author with Confessions of a Mask (1949). From then until his death he continued to publish novels, short stories, and plays each year. His crowning achievement, The Sea of Fertility tetralogy--which contains the novels Spring Snow (1969), Runaway Horses (1969), The Temple of Dawn (1970), and The Decay of the Angel (1971)--is considered one of the definitive works of twentieth century Japanese fiction. In 1970, at the age of 45 and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)--a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention.