Life For Sale

By (author) Mishima, Yukio; Translated by Dodd Stephen
Description:

''The best book I''ve read this year ... darkly comedic and full of tension and surprise'' Marina Abramovic

''Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.''

When Hanio Yamada realises the future holds little of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits. A world of murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisoned carrots, code-breaking, a hopeless junkie heiress and makeshift explosives reveals itself to the unwitting hero. Is there nothing he can do to stop it? Resolving to follow the orders of his would-be purchasers, he comes to understand what life is worth, and whether we can indeed name our price.

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Yields a rare glimpse of the pulp-fiction flipside that partnered the rhapsodic and mystical Mishima... grotesque, melodramatic, spectacular, utterly silly
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It''s funny and horrific and curious and thoroughly entertaining and should win Mishima a new generation of fans
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There is a place in life for the exhilarating, surreal and sometimes downright silly. This novel ticks all the boxes
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Succeeds in capturing vividly the bathos of the self-pitying modern nihilist... the absurdity of life is conveyed through the tropes of pulp fiction and manga comics
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An engaging all-action satire
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A writer of immense energy and ability
Biographical note:
Yukio Mishima was born in 1925 in Tokyo, and is considered one of Japan''s most important writers. His books broke social boundaries and taboos at a time when Japan found itself in a state of rapid social change. His interests, besides writing, included body-building, acting and practising as a Samurai. In 1970 he attempted to start a military coup, which failed. Upon realizing this, Mishima performed seppuku, a ritual suicide, upon himself. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times.