Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of Dawn is the third novel in his masterful tetralogy, The Sea of Fertility. Here, Shigekuni Honda continues his pursuit of the successive reincarnations of Kiyoaki Matsugae, his childhood friend.
Travelling in Thailand in the early 1940s, Shigekuni Honda, now a brilliant lawyer, is granted an audience with a young Thai princess—an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is the reincarnated spirit of his friend Kiyoaki. As Honda goes to great lengths to discover for certain if his theory is correct, The Temple of Dawn becomesthe story of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment.
“Perfect beauty. . . . A classic of Japanese literature.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“Mishima was one of literature's great romantics, a tragedian with a heroic sensibility, an intellectual, an esthete, a man steeped in Western letters who toward the end of his life became a militant Japanese nationalist.”
—Jay McInerney, The New York Times
“Surpassingly chilling, subtle and original.”
—The New York Times
“[Mishima’s] Sea of Fertility tetralogy. . . shines ever more obviously as one of the great works of the last century.”
—William Vollman
