Fumiko Ueda Enchi Knihy

Published for the first time in the UK, one of Japan's greatest modern female writers In the late nineteenth century, Tomo, the faithful wife of a government official, is sent to Tokyo, where a heartbreaking task is awaiting her. From among hundreds of geishas and daughters offered up for sale by their families she must select a respectable young girl to become her husband's new lover. Externally calm, but torn apart inside, Tomo dutifully begins the search for an official mistress. The Waiting Years was awarded Japan's most prestigious literary award, the Noma Prize.

'Clear and powerful' (Kirkus), Masks is perhaps Fumiko Enchi's finest work and her first to be translated into English. In this stunning and subtle novel about seduction and infidelity in latter-day Japan and about the destructive force of feminine jealousy and resentment, Mieko Togano, a handsome and cultivated woman in her 50s, manipulates--for her own bizarre purposes--the relationship between her widowed daughter-in-law, Yasuko, and the two men in love with her.