The dancing girl of Izu and other stories1997

One of the most influential figures in modern Japanese fiction, Yasunari Kawabata is treasured for the intensity of his perception and the compressed elegance of his style. This new collection includes twenty-two stories now appearing in English for the first time in book form. Written between 1923 and 1929, these short fictions form a shadow biography of the author's early years, and provide fresh glimpses of Kawabata's haunting and haunted vision.

Born in 1899, Kawabata committed suicide at age seventy-two. Throughout his life he was concerned with themes of loss, longing, and memory. His childhood was repeatedly shaken by deaths in the family - first his parents when he was three, then a grandmother, an older sister, and finally the blind grandfather he cared for in his early...