Sound of the Mountain

<b>From the Nobel Prize-winning writer and acclaimed author of <i>Snow Country</i> comes a beautiful rendering of the predicament of old age--about an elderly Tokyo businessman who must face the failures of his memory and the sudden upsurges of passion that illuminate the end of a life. <br></b> <br><b>A rich complicated novel.... Of all modern Japanese fiction Kawabata's is the closest to poetry. --<i>The New York Times Book Review</i><br></b><br>By day Ogata Shingo an elderly Tokyo businessman is troubled by small failures of memory. At night he associates the distant rumble he hears from the nearby mountain with the sounds of death. In between are the complex relationships that were once the foundations of Shingo's life: his trying wife; his philandering son; and his beautiful daughter-in-law who inspires in him both pity and the stirrings of desire. Out of this translucent web of attachments Kawabata has crafted a novel that is a powerful serenely observed meditation on the relentless march of time. <p/>Translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker