The Sound of the Mountain - Outside of a Dog

No cover — Yasunari Kawabata: The Sound of the Mountain (1996, Vintage)

Paperback, 288 pages

English language

Published May 28, 1996 by Vintage.

ISBN:: 978-0-679-76264-5

By day Ogata Shingo, an elderly Tokyo businessman, is troubled by small failures of memory. At night he associates the distant rumble he hears from the nearby mountain with the sounds of death. In between are the complex relationships that were once the foundations of Shingo’s life: his trying wife; his philandering son; and his beautiful daughter-in-law, who inspires in him both pity and the stirrings of desire. Out of this translucent web of attachments, Kawabata has crafted a novel that is a powerful, serenely observed meditation on the relentless march of time.

Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker

1 edition

Wild Woila reviewed The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata

Mellow & unfocussed, much like old age

3 stars

In post-war Japan, an aging man grapples ineffectually with the autumn of his life, the failure of his children's marriages, and his slightly inappropriate relationship with his daughter-in-law. Calmly mellow & unfocussed, much like old age might be.

Subjects

Modern fiction
Literary
Japanese (Language) Contemporary Fiction
Kawabata, Yasunari - Prose & Criticism
Fiction - General
Fiction
Asian - General
Fiction / Literary
Japan