Masks by Fumiko Enchi

Masks by Fumiko Enchi

Masks is Enchi's elegant, seductive story of sexual deception, revenge, and the haunting legacy of the past.

Ibuki loves widow Yasuko, who is young, charming and sparkling with intelligence. His friend, Mikame, desires her too but that is not the difficulty. What troubles Ibuki is the curious bond that has grown between Yasuko and her mother-in-law, a beautiful, cultivated yet jealous woman, who is manipulating the relationship between Yasuko and the two men who love her.

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Fumiko Enchi was the pen-name of Fumi Ueda, one of the most prominent Japanese women writers in the Showa period of Japan. Her first play,A Turbulent Night in Late Spring, performed at the Tsukiji Little Theatre, was a success and a short story published in 1952, Days of Hunger, was acclaimed by the critics and won the coveted Women Writers Prize.

On the publication in 1957 of The Waiting Years – a novel she took eight years to write – she won Japan’s highest literary award, the Noma Prize. Enchi was made a Person of Cultural Merit in 1979, and was awarded the Order of Culture by the Japanese government in 1985. She was elected to the Japan Art Academy shortly before her death in 1986.