Quicksand

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki · 1886–1965 · Japan

Originally Manji (Japanese) · translated by Howard Hibbett

Why it matters

A bored Osaka housewife's confession to a lawyer spirals through an obsessive affair with a younger woman and the men each draws in after her. Tanizaki's most claustrophobic ménage: devotion curdling into mutual destruction.

At a glance

A single breathless confessional voice narrates an escalating, entangled plot.