Some Prefer Nettles

Name: Some Prefer Nettles
Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)
Author: Junichiro Tanizaki
ISBN: 9780679752691

by Junichiro Tanizaki

3.8

(5 ratings)

224 pages1995Knopf Doubleday Publishing GroupISBN 9780679752691

Fiction

About this book

Junichiro Tanizaki’s Some Prefer Nettles is an exquisitely nuanced exploration of the allure of ancient Japanese tradition—and the profound disquiet that accompanied its passing. It is the 1920s in Tokyo, and Kaname and his wife Misako are trapped in a parody of a progressive Western marriage. No longer attracted to one another, they have long since stopped sleeping together and Kaname has sanctioned his wife’s liaisons with another man. But at the heart of their arrangement lies a sadness that impels Kaname to take refuge in the past, in the serene rituals of the classical puppet theater—and in a growing fixation with his father-in-law’s mistress. Some Prefer Nettles is an ethereally suggestive, psychologically complex exploration of the crisis every culture faces as it hurtles headfirst into modernity.

Publication Details

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1995
Pages: 224
ISBN: 9780679752691
Language: en

About Junichiro Tanizaki

> Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎潤一郎, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, 24 July 1886 – 30 July 1965) was a Japanese author who is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. The tone and subject matter of his work ranges from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle portrayals of the dynamics of family life within the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently, his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of the West and Japanese tradition are juxtaposed. >He was one of six authors on the final shortlist for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, the year before his death. --- [From Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun%27ichir%C5%8D_Tanizaki)