The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea: Yukio Mishima

`A major work of art` Time

A band of savage thirteen-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call `objectivity`. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship`s officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.