The Heiké Story
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few epics in world literature can rival the sweeping grandeur of The Heiké Story, Eiji Yoshikawa's magnificent retelling of twelfth-century Japan's most dramatic age — the era of the Genpei War, when the rival Taira (Heike) and Minamoto (Genji) clans tore the nation apart in a struggle for supreme power. Translated from the Japanese by Fuki Wooyenara Uramatsu, the novel chronicles the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of the Taira clan through a vast cast of samurai warriors, court nobles, and common people, all swept up in the tide of history, with the charismatic Kiyomori at its heart — a man of iron ambition and thunderous contradictions who reshapes a nation in his own image. Yoshikawa, Japan's most celebrated popular novelist, writes with the narrative propulsion of a master storyteller, weaving historical fact with vivid human drama to produce a work that stands as both a national saga and a universal meditation on power, loyalty, and the inexorable passage of time. His prose — rendered with elegance and precision in this English translation — captures the austere beauty of the Heian court alongside the brutal poetry of the battlefield. A towering achievement that leaves the reader questioning whether Kiyomori's legacy was one of greatness or ruin — and whether, in the end, there is any difference.
Author: Eiji Yoshikawa
Format: Paperback
Genre: Historical fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Few epics in world literature can rival the sweeping grandeur of The Heiké Story, Eiji Yoshikawa's magnificent retelling of twelfth-century Japan's most dramatic age — the era of the Genpei War, when the rival Taira (Heike) and Minamoto (Genji) clans tore the nation apart in a struggle for supreme power. Translated from the Japanese by Fuki Wooyenara Uramatsu, the novel chronicles the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of the Taira clan through a vast cast of samurai warriors, court nobles, and common people, all swept up in the tide of history, with the charismatic Kiyomori at its heart — a man of iron ambition and thunderous contradictions who reshapes a nation in his own image. Yoshikawa, Japan's most celebrated popular novelist, writes with the narrative propulsion of a master storyteller, weaving historical fact with vivid human drama to produce a work that stands as both a national saga and a universal meditation on power, loyalty, and the inexorable passage of time. His prose — rendered with elegance and precision in this English translation — captures the austere beauty of the Heian court alongside the brutal poetry of the battlefield. A towering achievement that leaves the reader questioning whether Kiyomori's legacy was one of greatness or ruin — and whether, in the end, there is any difference.