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Spring Snow

The Sea of Fertility, 1

Part of Vintage International

Author Yukio Mishima
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Paperback
$18.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Apr 14, 1990 | 400 Pages | 9780679722410
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The first novel of Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, Spring Snow is set in Tokyo in 1912, when the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders—rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power.

“Perfect beauty. . . . A classic of Japanese literature.” —Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Mishima was one of literature's great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist.” —Jay McInerney, The New York Times
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 forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention. View titles by Yukio Mishima

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The first novel of Mishima's landmark tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility, Spring Snow is set in Tokyo in 1912, when the hermetic world of the ancient aristocracy is being breached for the first time by outsiders—rich provincial families unburdened by tradition, whose money and vitality make them formidable contenders for social and political power.

“Perfect beauty. . . . A classic of Japanese literature.” —Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Mishima was one of literature's great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist.” —Jay McInerney, The New York Times

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 forty-five and the day after completing the last novel in the Fertility series, Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide)—a spectacular death that attracted worldwide attention. View titles by Yukio Mishima

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