A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the Emperor - the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen. He wrote countless stories and thirty-three plays, in some of which he performed. Several films have been made from his novels, includingThe Sound of Waves,Enjowhich was based onThe Temple of the Golden PavilionandThe Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea. Among his other works are the novelsConfessions of a MaskandThirst for Loveand the short story collectionsDeath in MidsummerandActs of Worship.The Sea of Fertilitytetralogy, however, is his masterpiece. After Mishima conceived the idea ofThe Sea of Fertilityin 1964, he frequently said he would die when it was completed. On 25 November 1970, the day he completedThe Decay of the Angel, the last novel of the cycle, Mishima committedseppuku(ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five.

'A major work of art' Time>