‘In this masterpiece Kawabata, his brush dipped in silver, renders all the excruciating anguish and beauty of post-war Japan’ Edmund White.

‘In this masterpiece Kawabata, his brush dipped in silver, renders all the excruciating anguish and beauty of post-war Japan’ Edmund White.

With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters - born to the same father but different mothers - struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third sibling, while also experiencing love for the first time. While Momoko, their father's first child - haunted by the loss of her kamikaze boyfriend and their final, disturbing days together - seeks comfort in a series of unhealthy romances.