The Rainbow -- Yasunari Kawabata, Paperback

Available in English for the very first time, a powerful, poignant novel about three half sisters in post-war Japan, from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow Country.

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. And both sisters find themselves unable to outrun the legacies of their late mothers. A thoughtful, probing novel about the enduring traumas of war, the unbreakable bonds of family, and the inescapability of the past, The Rainbow is a searing, melancholy work from one of Japan's greatest writers. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL.

Author: Yasunari Kawabata
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 11/07/2023
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780593314920

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2022 pg. 4
Publishers Weekly 10/16/2023
Booklist 10/15/2023 pg. 23
Shelf Awareness 11/10/2023

About the Author
YASUNARI KAWABATA, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of Japan's most distinguished novelists. Born in Osaka in 1899, he published his first stories while he was still in high school. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924. His story "The Izu Dancer," first published in 1925, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1955. Among his major novels published in the United States are Snow Country (1956), The Master of Go (1972), and Beauty and Sadness (1975). Kawabata was found dead, by his own hand, in 1972.