The Goddess

Sugo—an esteemed and well-educated head of the family—realized in his youth the secret of feminine attractiveness: day after day, you have to convince a woman of her beauty, and she will truly blossom. A subtle admirer of the beautiful, he tested this method for years on his wife, and then—on his only daughter. His impeccable, yet irresistible Pygmalion-like passion is to raise Asako into a perfect woman. But what will happen when the created ideal steps out into the wider world and, for the first time, encounters love and betrayal?..

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) — one of the leading writers of the 20th century, the most widely read Japanese author in the world, holder of a rare gift, celebrated both for the breadth of his literary forms (novels, plays, short stories, essays) and for his astonishing biography (his fascination with bodybuilding, ultra-right views, and the harakiri he committed after a failed attempt at a monarchist coup). His “The Goddess” is an elegant, at times satirical allegory about the nature of creativity (it is commonly believed that Mishima here takes issue with the aesthete Jun’ichiro Tanizaki and with the tragic figure of Japanese literature, Osamu Dazai), and at the same time a piercing tale about people who, out of love for the beautiful, try to shape beauty out of living flesh—and inevitably find themselves face to face with gods.

First in Russian!