'In this masterpiece Kawabata his brush dipped in silver renders all the excruciating anguish
and beauty of post-war Japan' Edmund White With the Second World War only a few years in the
past and Japan still reeling from its effects two sisters - born to the same father but
different mothers - struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age.
Asako the younger has become obsessed with locating a third sibling while also experiencing
love for the first time. While Momoko their father's first child - haunted by the loss of her
kamikaze boyfriend and their final disturbing days together - seeks comfort in a series of
unhealthy romances. And both sisters find themselves unable to outrun the legacies of their
late mothers. A thoughtful probing novel about the enduring traumas of war the unbreakable
bonds of family and the inescapability of the past The Rainbow is a searing melancholy work
from one of Japan's greatest writers. Translated by Haydn Trowell
