Hosts Sandra Newman and Catherine Nichols discuss Yukio Mishima's 1963 novel The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, a disturbing, sui generis book about a young boy watching the developing relationship between his urbane, well-heeled mother and a quiet sailor with dark, secret dreams of glory. The boy also has secrets: he is spying on the sailor and his mother when they have sex, and he belongs to a secret society of boys that will ultimately condemn the sailor to death. The book reads like an intimate and damning portrayal of the mentality of fascism, but Mishima himself was one of the most famous Japanese fascists of the post-war period; he died by committing seppuku after leading a failed right-wing coup against Japan's democratic government.
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