Quicksand

I've really enjoyed this book. There's love, manipulation and deceit and even when all is said and done, it is still impossible to disentangle the three.

Bunraku is the unique puppet theater of Japan, in which nearly life-size puppets, manipulated by visible puppeteers in black, mime the classic melodramas of Chikamatsu while the narrative is chanted to the accompaniment of the shamisen. Most famous of all Bunraku plays is "The Lovers' Suicide", a piece of theater as central to Japanese culture as The Iliad was to Greek or Goethe's faust is to German. 20th C writer Junichiro Tanizaki would have known ever detail of The Lovers' Suicide from Buraku and Kabuki, and however bizarre and modernistic Tanizaki might seem to an English reader, he was profoundly aware of his place in Japanese tradition. "Quicksand", a novel written in the middle of his career, is Bunraku to the core -- a tale of a lovers' triangle, of obsession and jealousy, and of suicide, with just a hint of "possession" by fox-spirits. Even the narrative structure smacks of puppetry; the central figure of the lovers' triangle 'chants' the events to an audience of one, presumably the novelist himself.What begins as erotic teasing evolves slowly into masochistic hysteria and emotional pornography. It would be easy to hate this novel if it were written by an Italian or an Icelander, but from within the insular semiotics of Japanese literature, it makes a kind of gaudy sense. Western readers will inevitably interpret it as a 'psychological' depiction of obsession, to which a Japanese reader might respond "so be it, but then all of Japanese history is a depiction of obsession." Are you ready to perceive beauty in an overwrought, maudlin desperation? Possibly then you are Japanese enough to appreciate Tanizaki.I'd love to be able to read Tanizaki in Japanese. I studied the language furiously for several years, I lived in Kyoto for a year, I became fluent enough to have meaningful conversations with Japanese friends though never fluent enough to follow their exchanges with each other, but I never came close to knowing enough "kanji" characters to read Tanizaki. I noticed, curiously, that the more fluent I became in Japanese, the more skeptical my Japanese friends became of my communication. At a certain point, it seemed, my access to the culture had to be all or nothing, an impossible assimilation which would have required me to stop being myself. Reading Japanese novels - Tanizaki, Kawabata, Oe - often gives me the same eerie feeling of being ineluctably foreign, a "gai-jin" to the soles of my feet.I've rated this novel at four stars solely in comparison to Tanizaki's other masterpieces - The Makioka Sisters, Some Prefer Nettles, Naomi - rather than on an absolute scale. Compared to a Dan Brown or a Joyce Carol Oates, even a laundry list from Tanizaki would deserve a whole constellation of stars.

Beautiful, dark drama. Two women, one man and a suffering ghost in a domestic love story. One of Tanizaki best.

Awesome condition of the product. Amazing book to read. Will recommend to anybody, who likes Japanese literature. Enjoy the reading!!!

Tanizaki's obsession with destructive relationships is at its best in this novel. Mitsuko is a very dark and fascinating character, but Tanizaki doesn't go deep enough into her, though he couldn't since the story is told from Sonoko's POV. Her husband just goes along for the ride which is understandable and all leads to the inevitable ending. Did Sonoko deserve what she got? I wonder. Tanizaki gives you the feeling that she certainly couldn't help it, which can be said for many of us. I agree with one reviewer that the novel didn't particularly come together as well as his other novels, but Tanizaki's misfire is still better than most writers' best. Still, it would be best to read some of his other novels before trying this one. Start with Seven Japanese Tales to get a taste of him before going on to his best work The Makioka Sisters, and then come back to this.

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Not an enjoyable piece, yet another example of the broad Japanese literary fixation on tales of suicide. No great prose and no depth to the character study. The major characters were shallow, absorbed in their obsessive behaviours and their various (dull) sexual relationships with each other. There was no passion and little sense of time (1927) or place (Osaka and surrounds).The construct of the book as a monologue by the main protagonist, Sonoko, direct to the author was ineffective and added nothing to the story. It felt like a contrivance by the author to give him a firsthand connection to the characters and events - unnecessary and unrealistic.This is Quicksand indeed, which drowns the reader in the tedium of a lacklustre read. Perhaps this tale of lesbian love and menage a trois was considered an erotic melodrama at the time it was written, but it has not aged well. If you want a trip through the depths of the Japanese dark-side, then stick with Mishima. His works have the literary merit and tension that is lacking in Quicksand.

Scandalous! ~

A edição não é das melhores, mas o conteúdo um espetáculo

I had read The Makioka Sisters and expected a great deal more from Tanizaki, but was disappointed - with the plot, style and language. It is a contemporary novel, of course, but maybe I expected more. Nevertheless a simple read to pass time by.

A wonderful work of literary fiction and one where the author, Junichiro Tanizaki, eloquently weaves a story of passion, deceit, corruption, manipulation and human suffering into a gripping and fascinating novel. This book drew me in from its opening paragraph and kept me hooked until I had finished the last page. The story revolves around Sonoko Kakiuchi, a cultured married woman who, in a first person narrative, relates the unsettling story of her infatuation with a beautiful young woman, Mitsuko. However, this novel is not (thankfully) just a story of a love affair between two women, it is so much more. Whether this story is an accurate depiction of relationships between Japanese people in the 1920s, or whether it is mostly the work of a fertile imagination, would take someone with more knowledge of Japanese culture than I to answer this - but I do feel that the story itself transcends culture and gender. As the story progresses, Mitsuko becomes increasingly enigmatic and then, as the convoluted drama unrolls, we have to ask ourselves how reliable is Sonoko as a narrator - how fragile has her grip on reality become? Do read this and decide for yourself.5 Stars

The story of a love between the local beauty and the wife in a dulled marriage; the plots and intrigue of the situation; of how to deal with the husband and the suitor; the gradual dawning on the gentlemen and their solutions. A study of jealousy that, naturally, ends tearfully.There is a lot of dialogue in this Japanese tale, some of which feels a little coy and unnecessarily antagonising but I suppose it could happen this way.Not really my cup of Saki but it will appeal to those who enjoy reading into others' awkward lives.

What a convoluted story of intrigue, spite and manipulation written almost a century ago. At first I missed the classical Tanazaki from the Makioka Sisters and Diary of a Mad Old Man, but the story soon got into its stride. An illicit affair, manipulation and murder, who could ask for more