The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea (Vintage Classics Japanese Series)

Mishima''s greatest novel, and one of the greatest of the past century'' The Times

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call ''objectivity''. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship''s officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic.

They regard this disillusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions.