An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating WorldFrom the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize winning novel The Remains of the Day In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day

In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.

Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the "floating world"--the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink--offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 09/19/1989
ISBN: 9780679722663
Pages: 208
Weight: 0.51lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.20w x 0.59d

Review Citations: Commonweal 12/07/2001 pg. 24

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 78277 / Artist of the Floating World
Reading Level: 7.1 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 11