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Life for Sale

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Life for Sale

Written by: Yukio Mishima
Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
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About this listen

After botching a suicide attempt, salaryman Hanio Yamada decides to put his life up for sale in the classifieds section of a Tokyo newspaper. Soon interested parties come calling with increasingly bizarre requests and what follows is a madcap comedy of errors, involving a jealous husband, a drug-addled heiress, poisoned carrots - even a vampire. For someone who just wants to die, Hanio can't seem to catch a break, as he finds himself enmeshed in a continent-wide conspiracy that puts him in the crosshairs of both his own government and a powerful organized-crime syndicate. By turns wildly inventive, darkly comedic, and deeply surreal, in Life for Sale Yukio Mishima stunningly uses satire to explore the same dark themes that preoccupied him throughout his lifetime.

©1968 Yukio Mishima (P)2020 Random House Audio Classics Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Psychological Comedy Fiction Witty

What the critics say

"Funny and horrific and curious and thoroughly entertaining.... [Life for Sale] should win Mishima a new generation of fans." (The Independent)

"This dark, funny social satire feels like something only Mishima could’ve written.... A slapstick comedy with a complex moral underpinning, and an intriguing departure from his introspective work.... Mishima’s pungent insights into the challenges of postwar Japanese life are threaded brilliantly throughout." (Publishers Weekly)

"An eccentric satire.... [An] offbeat, sardonic yarn about self-commodification and its discontents." (Kirkus Reviews)

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Thought provoking and interesting

I love the concept the story is based on, the situations the character finds himself in and the overall premis of the story is very thought provoking. The sense of nihilism and inevitability is captured really well by the narrator and I look forward to listening to more of both the narrator and author.

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