The Maids Contributor(s): Tanizaki, Junichiro (Author), Cronin, Michael P. (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0811228746 ISBN-13: 9780811228749 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation OUR PRICE: $14.36 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2019 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Sagas - Fiction | Family Life - General |
Dewey: FIC |
LCCN: 2016037889 |
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.3" W x 7.9" (0.35 lbs) 176 pages |
Themes: - Topical - Family |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: The Maids, Tanizaki's final novel, sparkles like a jewel. Over the years--before, during, and after WWII--many women work in the pampered, elegant household of the famous author Chikura Raikichi, his wife, and her younger sister. Though the family's quite well-to-do, the house is small; the proximity of the maids helps perhaps to explain Raikichi's extremely close, and somewhat eroticized, observation of all their little ways. In the sensualist patrician Raikichi, Tanizaki offers a richly ironic self-portrait, but he presents as well an exquisitely nuanced chronicle of change and loss: centuries' old values and manners are vanishing, and here--in the evanescent beauty of all the small gestures and intricacies of private life--we find a whole world passing away. |
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. |