Winter Sleep

By Kenzo Kitakata

The legendary Japanese master's Winter Sleep take you into the hardboiled world of art--where ex-cons are philosophers, young lovers are combustible, and aesthetics is life. An artist's quest for growth from one of the world's greatest stylists.

Nakagi, an ex-con painter who has sequestered himself in a mountain cabin, is trying to elevate his art. The only thing breaking his solitude are the visits of two women: an art dealer who wants him to produce the sort of paintings that she would like to buy from him, and a young aspiring, and soulful apprentice. When Nakagi welcomes an escaped felon into the emotionally fraught fold, and begins to teach him to pain well. Winter Sleep awakens to a literally incendiary climax.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932234136
• ISBN13: 9781932234138
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Vertical
• Length: 282 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 16 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 11 and higher

Customer Reviews

Inside Someone Else's Head

I was fascinated with this book, as I was with ASHES. Each took me into the life and thoughts of someone I would never expect to identify with, and I was completely absorbed. I appreciated sharing the most mundane moments in first person with the principal character, as well as his high and low moments. In a way that Takeshi Kitano did with his early gangster films, I felt that I had been given an important insight into what it could really be like to be an artist. The characters were very interesting and complex, each with a mysterious history, and their interactions were highly unexpected right to the end. The plot moved forward in a logical manner, and the ending was satisfying, something I can't say for many Japanese novels I have read. Kitaka seems to be known as a crime writer, but crime didn't seem to be the main emphasis here. A good book!