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Book Review of The Sound of the Mountain

The Sound of the Mountain
reviewed on


Taken from the back cover.

The Sound of the Mountain is one of Yasunari Kawabatas most important works. Its quality is luminous and intense; its concern is with the anxieties and desires of an old man, Shingo who hears the sound of the mountain the faint rumble in the hills that is a muffled hint of unknown occurrences and a foreboding of death. And his emotions the affection (perhaps even sexual desire) he feels for his daughter-in-law, the increasing tensions of his relations with his wife, son, and daughter are also muffled, indistinct, subtle, yet disturbingly powerful. The events of the novel are real and immediate, yet throughout they are touched and unified by an almost dreamlike symbolism. The resulting whole is a remarkable expression of the unique talents of this great writer, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.