(B) Snow Country (Yasunari Kawabata, 1956) Grade: A
Kawabata is the first Japanese writer to receieve the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he won for this novel. It’s a beautifully written book about geisha Komako who loves wealthy Shimamura, despite knowing her love will be fruitless and tragic. It explores the binds, however loose, that hold people together and what eventually unravels them. He himself was the object of her love; and yet the woman’s existence, her straining to live, came touching to him like naked skin. He pitied her, and he pitied himself.

Side note: After establishing himself as one of Japan’s most distinguished novelists, Kawabata killed himself with no note, leaving his suicide a mystery.