The Reed Cutter & Captain Shigemoto’s Mother

One of the great novelists of the twentieth century, Junichiro Tanizaki wrote about love–and sex–with a breathtaking suppleness of style and a vast depth of literary allusion. In these two novellas, brilliantly translated by Anthony H. Chambers and appearing in paperback for the first time, Tanizaki probes the translucent screen that separates idealized yearning from humiliating obsession in a society of impenetrable decorum.