House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories (Vintage International)

Three erotically charged short stories from Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In the tales in this collection, Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata probes the interplay of erotic fantasy and reality in the minds of three lonely men. In "House of the Sleeping Beauties," an old man pays to sleep with--but not touch--beautiful, sedated young girls; in "One Arm," a young woman gifts a man her right arm for the night; and in "Of Birds and Beasts," a middle-aged man's memories of an affair with a dancer mingle with glimpses of his abnormal attachment to his pets. Piercing examinations of sexuality and human psychology--and works of remarkable subtlety and beauty--the stories in House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories , translated by Edward Seidensticker, showcase one of the twentieth century's great writers--in any language--at his very best.