Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata

Palm-Of-The-Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata

Recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the novelist Yasunari Kawabata felt the essence of his art was to be found not in his longer works but in a series of short stories--which he called "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories"--written over the span of his career. In them we find loneliness, love, and the passage of time, demonstrating the range and complexity of a true master of short fiction.

Yasunari Kawabata was born in the city of Osaka in the year 1899. He was the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. He published his first pieces while still in high school and graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924, making him one of Japan's most renowned novelists. The Izu Dancer, a short story he initially published in 1925, was reprinted in The Atlantic Monthly in 1955. Snow Country (1956), which consolidated Kawabata's status as one of the leading voices of his period, as well as Thousand Cranes (1959), The Sound of the Mountain (1970), The Master of Go (1972), and Beauty and Sorrow (1975), cemented his reputation as one of the preeminent voices of his time.

He was the chairman of the People's Environmental Network (P.E.N.). He was a member of the Japan Club for long years and was awarded the Goethe-medal in Frankfurt in 1959. In 1972, Kawabata passed away.