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  • Published: 19 November 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141189567
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $27.99

Forbidden Colours



A Japenese masterpiece, reissued in Modern Classics

Written when Mishima was only twentysix, Forbidden Colors is a depiction of a male homosexual relationship, in which a rich older man buys the love of a young man who is stunningly handsome but who lacks the ability to love. As in Mann's Death in Venice, the older man's longing for the beauty of youth is associated with aestheticism and death.

  • Published: 19 November 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141189567
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $27.99

About the author

Yukio Mishima

Yukio Mishima was born in 1925 in Tokyo, and is considered one of the Japan's most important writers. His books broke social boundaries and taboos at a time when Japan found itself in a state of rapid social change. His interests, besides writing, included body-building, acting and practising as a Samurai. In 1970 he attempted to start a military coup, which failed. Upon realizing this, Mishima performed seppuku, a ritual suicide, upon himself. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times.

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