An Artist of the Floating World

First edition. 8vo. 206pp. Black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. First issue, printed by Butler & Tanner Ltd. [Second issue printed by Richard Clay].

A trifle spotted to textblock edges and d/j verso, else Fine. Lacks usual tanning, which blights this title.

Author's second novel. Winner of the 1986 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, subsequently won for The Remains of the Day in 1989. A portrait of the artist as an ageing man. Masuji Ono once put his art at the service of WWII Japanese militarism. In the aftermath of defeat, he finds solace in memories of his youth and of the 'floating world' – the nocturnal realm of pleasure.

Recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world". "The kind [of novel] that stretches the reader's awareness, teaching him to read more perceptively." –Kathryn Morton, New York Times Book Review