The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea
Authors: Yukio Mishima, John Nathan
Publisher: Vintage Classics
ISBN: 9781784879723
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.
Tagged with: classics / fiction / international / japanese / John Nathan / translation / Yukio Mishima