Description
Village Book Club: "Confessions of a Mask" by Yukio Mishima (1949)
Host: Marco Astolfi
Although written as a novel, “Confessions of a Mask” is a barely fictionalized autobiography of Mishima’s life from birth in 1925 to young adulthood. The main character, Kochan is a shy and weak boy who grows up with his grandmother, isolated from other boys his age. As an adolescent, he is tormented by his burgeoning attraction to men: he imagines the body of one of his classmates punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in the painting that obsesses him. But, in the rigid world of imperial wartime Japan there is no place for such transgressive desires. He must wear a mask and hide his true nature, whatever the cost. To hide his homosexuality, he courts a girl, but is continuously tormented by his latent sexual urges, and is unable to ever truly love her. The book became a major international success overnight and made the previously unknown Mishima famous worldwide at the young age of 24.
The discussion on the evening will be in English (with translation from and to German if necessary).
Enjoy reading!
The Village Book Club started in September 2017 with a discussion on “The Velvet Rage”. Since then book lovers and bookworms have been meeting on a bimonthly basis, live and online, to discuss works of fiction and non-fiction (novels, biographies, and essays) focused on or related to GBTQ themes and personalities.
