The Maids Contributor(s): Tanizaki, Junichiro (Author), Cronin, Michael P. (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0811224929 ISBN-13: 9780811224925 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation OUR PRICE: $20.66 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: April 2017 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Sagas - Fiction | Family Life - General |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 2016037889 |
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.5" W x 8.2" (0.75 lbs) 224 pages |
Themes: - Topical - Family |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: The Maids is a jewel: an astonishing complement to The Makioka Sisters, set in the same house, in the same turbulent decades, but among the servants as much as the masters. The Maids concerns all the young women who work--before, during, and after WWII--in the pampered, elegant household of the famous author Chikura Raikichi, his wife Sanko, and her younger sister. Though quite well-to-do, Raikichi has a small house: the family and the maids (usually a few, sharing a little room next to the kitchen) are on top of one another. This proximity helps to explain Raikichi's extremely close observation of the maids and their daily lives, although his interest carries with it more than a dash of the erotic, calling to mind Tanizaki's raciest books such as Diary of a Mad Old Man and The Key. In the sensualist, semi-innocent, sexist patrician Raikichi, Tanizaki offers a richly ironic self-portrait, but he presents as well a moving, nuanced chronicle of change and loss: centuries-old values and manners are vanishing, and here--in the evanescent beauty of the small gestures and intricacies of private life--we find a whole world to be mourned. And yet, there is such vivacity and such beauty of writing that Tanizaki creates an intensely compelling epic in a kitchen full of lively girls. Ethereally suggestive, sensational yet serious, witty but psychologically complex, The Maids is in many ways The Makioka Sisters revisited in a lighter, more comic mode. |
Contributor Bio(s): Tanizaki, Junichiro: - Author of The Makioka Sisters, In Praise of Shadows, and A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) is arguably the greatest Japanese writer of the twentieth century.Cronin, Michael P.: - Michael P. Cronin is assistant professor of Japanese at the College of William and Mary.Tanizaki, Junichiro: - Author of The Makioka Sisters, In Praise of Shadows, and A Cat, a Man, and Two Women, Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) is arguably the greatest Japanese writer of the twentieth century. |