Dandelions

The exquisite last novel from Nobel Prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata

Ineko has lost the ability to see things. At first it was a ping-pong ball, then it was her fiance. The doctors call it 'body blindness', and she is placed in a psychiatric clinic to recover. As Ineko's mother and fiance walk along the riverbank after visiting time, they wonder: is her condition a form of madness - or an expression of love? Exploring the distance between us, and what we say without words, Kawabata's transcendent final novel is the last word from a master of Japanese literature.

'Lusciously peculiar' Paris Review

Review: Yasunari Kawabata's lusciously peculiar novel Dandelions was unfinished when he took his life in 1972. It's a story of love and loss and mania, told in sparse, arresting prose * Paris Review *

Kawabata's novels are among the most affecting and original works of our time -- New York Times Book Review

There are few other writers who could invoke such a lasting memory of a single image with so few words. * San Francisco Chronicle *

A literary habitat like no other?quietly devastating fiction. Behind a lyrical and understated surface, chaotic passions pulse * The Independent *