Naomi

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki · 1886–1965 · Japan

Originally Chijin no Ai (Japanese) · translated by Anthony Chambers

Why it matters

A meek engineer plucks a fifteen-year-old café waitress from obscurity to mold into his Westernized ideal, and is slowly, deliciously destroyed by his own creation. Tanizaki's early comic nightmare of masochism dressed as modernization.

At a glance

Brisk, confessional first-person narration with a straightforward chronology.