La Chiave di Junichiro Tanizaki, Vertigine e Dannazione dell 'Eros

Bompiani, 1987-01-01. Paperback. Good. In Italian. 1987 Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 4 3/8 x 7 5/8 inches tall paperbound, 126 pp. Light soiling and moderate rubbing and edgewear to covers, especially tips and spine ends. Slight age toning to text. Otherwise, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked. ~L~ Translated from the original Japanese by Satoko Toguchi, The Key (Kagi in Japanese), is a novel written by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki in 1956. The entire story is written in diary form, alternating between the entries of an elderly man who decides to spice up his ailing marriage with a series of intrigues and that of his much younger wife, who complies with her husband's desires without letting him know she is aware of his schemes. Tanizaki (1886 - 1965) was one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Soseki. Some of his works present a shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions. Others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in 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 nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.