The sound of the mountain, paperback/yasunari kawabata

Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabatas The Sound of the Mountain is a beautiful rendering of the predicament of old age -- the gradual, reluctant narrowing of a human life, along with the sudden upsurges of passion that illuminate its closing.

By day Ogata Shingo, an elderly Tokyo businessman, is troubled by small failures of memory.

At night he associates the distant rumble he hears from the nearby mountain with the sounds of death.

In between are the complex relationships that were once the foundations of Shingos life: his trying wife; his philandering son; and his beautiful daughter-in-law, who inspires in him both pity and the stirrings of desire.

Out of this translucent web of attachments, Kawabata has crafted a novel that is a powerful, serenely observed meditation on the relentless march of time.