The Girl from a Good Family

Kasumi grows up in a prosperous family: her father is a high-ranking official, her mother is a traditional housewife, her older brother has just happily married, and she herself is cherished, coddled, and subtly introduced to promising and reliable young men, subordinates of her father, hoping to marry her off. Kasumi studies at university, chuckles at her romantic best friend, no sorrows disturb her, but for some reason, she feels uneasy. And when Kasumi accidentally learns that one of the promising and reliable young men is not so reliable after all, but rather an inspired heartbreaker, she secretly befriends him and ironically observes his escapades, assuring herself that she is certainly not jealous and not in love at all... Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) is a star of 20th-century literature, the most widely read Japanese author in the world, a holder of brilliant talent, famous for both his works of the broadest range and diversity of genres (novels, plays, short stories, essays) and his astonishing biography (obsession with bodybuilding, far-right political views, harakiri after a failed attempt at a monarchical coup). The novel "The Girl from a Good Family," a year after its publication successfully adapted into a film by director Taro Yuge, is a sample of Mishima's later prose, a mirrored room, a subtle comedy, a satire on Japanese intellectuals, and a deep analysis of the transformation of a young woman in marriage. To this day, this novel has not been translated into any languages of the world; before you is its first publication in Russian.