Life For Sale (Penguin Modern Classics)

Description:

'The best book I've read this year ... darkly comedic and full of tension and surprise' Marina Abramovic

'Life for sale. Use me as you wish. I am a twenty-seven-year-old male. Discretion guaranteed. Will cause no bother at all.'

When Hanio Yamada realises the future holds little of worth to him, he puts his life for sale in a Tokyo newspaper, thus unleashing a series of unimaginable exploits. A world of murderous mobsters, hidden cameras, a vampire woman, poisoned carrots, code-breaking, a hopeless junkie heiress and makeshift explosives reveals itself to the unwitting hero. Is there nothing he can do to stop it? Resolving to follow the orders of his would-be purchasers, he comes to understand what life is worth, and whether we can indeed name our price.

Review: Yields a rare glimpse of the pulp-fiction flipside that partnered the rhapsodic and mystical Mishima... grotesque, melodramatic, spectacular, utterly silly * The Times *
It's funny and horrific and curious and thoroughly entertaining and should win Mishima a new generation of fans * The Independent *
There is a place in life for the exhilarating, surreal and sometimes downright silly. This novel ticks all the boxes * Spectator *
Succeeds in capturing vividly the bathos of the self-pitying modern nihilist... the absurdity of life is conveyed through the tropes of pulp fiction and manga comics * The New Statesman *
An engaging all-action satire * The Guardian *
A writer of immense energy and ability * Time Out *

Author Biography: Yukio Mishima was born in 1925 in Tokyo, and is considered one of Japan's most important writers. His books broke social boundaries and taboos at a time when Japan found itself in a state of rapid social change. His interests, besides writing, included body-building, acting and practising as a Samurai. In 1970 he attempted to start a military coup, which failed. Upon realizing this, Mishima performed seppuku, a ritual suicide, upon himself. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature three times.