Description

Yasunari Kawabata first published Frumoasele adormite in 1961. It is his only novel that looks openly at the mind of sexual desire.

The story takes place in a strange house for old men. They come after dark to spend the night beside young girls. The girls lie in a deep, drugged sleep. No kiss or rough touch can wake them. Their stillness is a danger. It tempts the men to cross the house's rules. It seems to promise that harm will have no cost.

Kawabata asks whether these girls are toys or victims. He gives no single answer.

The central figure is an old man named Eguchi. He is keenly aware of scents and of the feel of touch. Each woman's body strikes him as unique. He still clings to memories of past lovers. In the bare room, with only a bed and a sleeping girl, he sees himself plainly. He is old, ugly to himself and close to death. His nights with the nameless girls bring him no joy. They bring sadness, regret and pain.

J.M. Coetzee, a Nobel Prize winner, wrote about the novel in The New York Review of Books. He read it as a study of erotic fantasy in an ageing man's mind.

This Romanian edition appears in the Humanitas series Raftul Denisei.