Penguin Books Ltd Beauty And Sadness

The successful writer Oki has reached middle age and is filled with regrets.He returns to Kyoto to find Otoko, a young woman with whom he had a terrible affair many years before, and discovers that she is now a painter, living with a younger woman as her lover.Otoko has continued to love Oki and has never forgotten him, but his return unsettles not only her but also her young lover.This is a work of strange beauty, with a tender touch of nostalgia and a heartbreaking sensitivity to those things lost forever.