Life for sale - Yukio Mishima

'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.

Yukio Mishima was born in 1925 in Tokyo, and is considered one of the 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.

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

Yields a rare glimpse of the pulp-fiction flipside that partnered the rhapsodic and mystical Mishima... grotesque, melodramatic, spectacular, utterly silly
The Times

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