Quicksand

From one of the greatest writers of twentieth-century Japan comes a silkily nuanced novel of erotic gamesmanship and obsession. The voice--cultured, ingenuous, and with a touch of coquetterie--is that of Sonoko Kakiuchi, an Osaka lady of good family married to a dully respectable lawyer.

Junichiro Tanizaki was born in Tokyo in 1886 and lived there until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the Kyoto-Osaka region, the scene of his novel <b>The Makioka Sisters</b> (1943-48). Among his works are <b>Naomi</b> (1924), <b>Some Prefer Nettles</b> (1928), <b>Quicksand</b> (1930), <b>Arrowroot</b> (1931), <b>A Portrait of Shunkin</b> (1933), <b>The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi</b> (1935), modern versions of <b>The Tale of Genji</b> (1941, 1954, and 1965), <b>Captain Shigemoto's Mothe</b><i>r </i>(1949), <b>The Key</b> (1956), and <b>Diary of a Mad Old Man</b> (1961). By 1930 he had gained such renown that an edition of his complete works was published, and he was awarded Japan's Imperial Prize in Literature in 1949. Tanizaki died in 1965.