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Thousand Cranes

By Yasunari Kawabata
Penguin Classics
Series: Penguin Archive
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Brief Description
Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata is one of 90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books. Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father, only to find that the mistress' rival and successor is also present. He falls... Read More
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Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata is one of 90 classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books.

Kikuji has been invited to a tea ceremony by a mistress of his dead father, only to find that the mistress' rival and successor is also present. He falls for her, with devastating consequences.

By 1949, Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, felt that the tradition of the tea ceremony had been degraded. In this delicate novella, he uses the ceremony as a powerful vehicle for loneliness, yearning, and loss of history.

Series: Penguin Archive

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780241752098

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 17 April 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Classics

Contributors:

  • Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
  • Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 9.0mm

Width: 110.0mm

Height: 180.0mm

Weight: 91g

Pages: 144

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Penguin Books Penguin Classics Penguin Classics: General Fiction Series: Penguin Archive Yasunari Kawabata

About the Author

Yasunari Kawabata was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1899 and before the Second World War had established himself as his country's leading novelist. Among his major works are Snow Country, A Thousand Cranes and The Master of Go. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, he died in 1972.

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  • Snow Country
    Introducing Little Clothbound Classics - irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas, and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Tired of the bustling city, a man takes the train through the snow to Japan's mountains, to meet with a geisha he believes he loves. Beautiful and innocent, she is tightly bound by the rules...
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    A powerful, poignant novel about three half-sisters in post-war Japan, from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Snow Country. With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two half-sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age....
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  • Snow Country
    A tale of wasted love, and beauty, by Japan's literary master. Shimamura is tired of the bustling city. He takes the train through the snow to the mountains of the west coast of Japan, to meet with a geisha he believes he loves. Beautiful and innocent, Komako is tightly bound by the rules of a rural geisha, and lives a...
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  • The Master of Go
    Pre-order
    The Master of Go
    Experience a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Nobel Prize-Winner Yasunari Kawabata, and his remarkable fictional account of a world about to be cleft in two as two men battle to become the master of the strategy game, Go. Luminous, suspenseful and serene, The Master of Go is a compelling portrait, quietly devastating, of two men - and a whole society - facing...
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