Snow Country

Yasunari Kawabata · 1899–1972 · Japan

Originally Yukiguni (Japanese) · translated by Edward Seidensticker

Why it matters

A Tokyo dilettante and a hot-spring geisha, in a landscape where 'the earth lay white under the night sky.' Prose distilled toward haiku: the book most often handed to readers seeking Japanese literature's essence.

At a glance

Sparse, elliptical, imagistic prose that withholds explicit connective logic.