Beautiful Star

About the book

Interplanetary, quite extraordinary . . . awash with dark humour and scenes of intense beauty' Financial Times 'One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century' New Yorker Beautiful Star is a 1962 tale of family, love, nuclear war and UFOs, and was considered by Mishima to be one of his very best books. Translated into English for the first time, this atmospheric black comedy tells the story of the Osugi family, who come to the sudden realization that each of them hails from a different planet: Father from Mars, mother from Jupiter, son from Mercury and daughter from Venus. This extra-terrestrial knowledge brings them closer together, and convinces them that they have a mission: to find others of their kind, and save humanity from the imminent threat of the atomic bomb...

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Discussed at

• 1 Star Reads · 15/10/2025