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.
