After the Banquet

Kazu runs a prestigious restaurant that serves the powerful men of Japanese politics — a world of carefully curated appearances, and the lies that sustain it. When she meets Noguchi, a retired diplomat with a sharp mind and a troubled past, their relationship becomes a slow unraveling of the certainties both of their lives were built upon. Mishima's prose is precise and tactile, turning a story of love and deception into a meditation on beauty, truth, and the cost of the performance we perform for others.