Death in Midsummer by Yukio Mishima

Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.

It was the height of summer, and there was anger in the rays of the sun

Filled with rich description and luxurious beauty, these ten tales of loss and longing from one of Japan’s greatest writers show the pull between duty and desire, ecstasy and death: a mother lost in mourning, a moonlit journey to fulfil a wish, a night of infidelity, a young lieutenant who ends his life.

Yukio Mishima was a novelist, playwright, poet, actor, bodybuilder and Samurai, whose writing broke social boundaries when Japan was in a state of rapid change. In 1970 he performed seppuku, a ritual suicide, upon himself after initiating a failed military coup. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times.

Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker, Ivan Morris, Donald Keene and Geoffrey W. Sargent