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Life for Sale

Pages
187
Published
1968
Language
English

Synopsis

Yukio Mishima's darkly comic 1968 novel follows Hanio Yamada, a young Tokyo advertising copywriter who survives a suicide attempt and, finding life meaningless afterward, places a newspaper advertisement selling himself to the highest bidder. What follows is a delirious, satirical adventure through a Tokyo underworld of gangsters, rival spies, a woman who claims to be a vampire, poisoned carrots, and a young addict looking for someone to die alongside her. Serialized in Weekly Playboy before its hardcover release, Life for Sale (published in French as Vie à vendre, translated by Dominique Palmé) is one of Mishima's most playful and unexpected books — a parody of detective and spy fiction that doubles as a cynical meditation on the value of a life.

About the author

三
三島由紀夫

Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威, Hiraoka Kimitake; 14 January 1925 – 25 November 1970), known by his pen name Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫, Mishima Yukio), was a Japanese writer, playwright, actor, martial artist, model, and the leader of an attempted coup d'état that culminated in his ritual suicide by seppuku. Mishima is considered one of the most important postwar stylists of the Japanese language. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times in the 1960s. His works include t...

Characters

Hanio YamadaProtagonist
All characters in Life for Sale