Three surreal, erotically charged stories from Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. In the three long tales in this collection, Yasunari Kawabata examines the boundaries between fantasy and reality in the minds of three lonely men. Piercing examinations of sexuality and human psychology—and works of remarkable subtlety and beauty—these stories showcase one of the twentieth century’s great writers—in any language—at his very best.

At an inn several hours from Tokyo, old men indulge in their last pleasure -- lying with beatiful young girls who are sleeping nude when the men arrive. As "House of the Sleeping Beauties" unfolds in Kawabata's subtle prose, the horrified reader comes to see that the sexual excitement is a result not of rejuvenescence, but of a flirtation with death. Eguchi's experience in the House triggers a series of memories and nightmares about his mistresses, wife, daughters, and a fourteen-year-old prostitute, revealing finally how barren all these relationships were and leading to a fierce determination to reach somehow, anyhow, these sleeping girls who are only the latest manifestation of the unreachable other. Yasunari Kawabata, first Japanese Nobel laureate in literature, was awarded the Nobel Prize for "his narrative mastership, which with great sensibility expresses the essence fo the Japanese mind." the wide recognition given to his beautiful, haunting "House of the Sleeping Beauties," signifies that the Japanese tradition of the novel, the oldest in the world, has now entered the world stream of writing.