Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima'There is in this world a kind of desire like stinging pain'A Japanese teenager is overcome with longing for his male classmate. He imagines his body punctured with arrows, like the body of St Sebastian in the painting that obsesses him. Over and over again, each night in his private fantasies, the objects of his lust are tortured, killed and maimed. But, in the rigid world of imperial wartime Japan there is no place for such transgressive desires. He

and about the world around him

presiding over macabre rituals where the unwanted and the disappeared are tortured and executed

brain and skin

never to return

What happened deep in mankind's past

A favorite of Tibetans and recommended by the Dalai Lama and other senior Buddhist teachers

'Mary Farren went into the gun room one morning about half-past eleven

and the courageous Gretel who can bring down monsters on her own

Konstandin has been dead for years

thanks to a recipe for hot chocolate that bewitches its drinkers

On 19 March 2017

Leading the hunt is the relentless Captain Smoker