Yukio Mishima wrote fiction like nobody else. Published in 1965, his novel “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea” is a prime example, a rapturous burst of language both mythical and keenly detailed, translated beautifully by American writer and director John Nathan.
In a Yokohama suburb during the postwar years, the fatherless 13-year-old Noboru joins a gang of sociopaths from good families. They scorn the uselessness of mankind — especially fathers, “the vilest things on earth” — and then kill and dissect a cat to practice their “absolute dispassion.”
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