Beautifully spare and deeply strange, Dandelionsexploring love and madnessis Kawabatas final novel, left incomplete when he committed suicide in April, 1972. The book concerns Inekos mother and Kuno, the young man who loves Ineko and wants to marry her. The two have left Ineko at the Ikuta Mental Hospital, which she has entered for treatment of a condition that might be called seizures of body blindness. Although her vision as a whole is unaffected, she periodically becomes unable to see her lover Kunos body: when this occurs, Ineko breaks down. Whether or not her condition actually constitutes madness is a topic of heated discussion between Kuno and Inekos mother
In this tantalizing book, Kawabata explores the incommunicability of desire as well as desires relation to the urge to hide. With Dandelions, Kawabata carries the art of the novel, where he always suggested more than he stated, into mysterious new realms.
A fascinating discovery, Kawabatas unfinished final novel Dandelions is a great masters last word
