The Decay of the Angel
Book 4 of Sea of Fertility
Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Published: Jan 31, 2001
Words:
72991
Flesch:
87.33
DDC:
895.635
FAST Tags:
Manners and customs,
Japan,
Adoption,
Japanese fiction,
Mishima; Yukio; 1925-1970
LCC:
PL833.I7
LC Genre:
Book Details
...
Description:
Yukio Mishima’s The Decay of the Angel is the final novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. It is the last installment of Shigekuni Honda’s pursuit of the successive reincarnations of his childhood friend Kiyoaki Matsugae.
It is the late 1960s and Honda, now an aged and wealthy man, once more encounters a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, Kiyoaki — this time restored to life as a teenage orphan, Tōru. Adopting the boy as his heir, Honda quickly finds that Tōru is a force to be reckoned with. The final novel of this celebrated tetralogy weaves together the dominant themes of the previous three novels in the series: the decay of Japan’s courtly tradition; the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics; and, underlying all, Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era.