'These stories are waves of fury, desire and delicious cruelty, always kissed by beauty and death' Mariana Enríquez

A new selection of lyrically haunting 1960s short stories, from a Japanese literary icon

A writer is seized by apocalyptic visions, a trio of beatniks dance to modern jazz in the ruins of an abandoned church, and a séance brings forth the reproachful spirits of the military dead.

In Voices of the Fallen Heroes, stark autobiography contrasts with pure horror, and the tenderness of first love cedes to obsession, heartbreak and deathly beauty. In one tale, Mishima recounts the true story of the time a deranged fan broke into his home at dawn. Elsewhere, a beautiful youth achieves eternal life through violent murder, and an ill-matched couple seal their fate with a pack of cards, tangled in the web of time and unfulfilled desire.

Available in English for the first time, and carefully selected by expert translators, these captivating stories are the perfect introduction to Mishima's work, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

"Arresting ... Here, in brutal, brilliant prose, we see a vivid manifestation of Mishima’s obsession with slaughter as a form of art, one that distils his hallmark preoccupations of death and beauty into a singularly intense poetic expression ... what this fine collection consistently demonstrates is how fundamentally, disturbingly, enduringly relevant Mishima’s writing remains" - Times Literary Supplement

"Mesmerising... wonderfully realised in English... Each one of the stories merits its inclusion in this collection, but two in particular stand out as masterpieces. 'The Flower Hat' is a miracle of compressed tension and potent socio-political discourse... the title story 'Voices of the Fallen Heroes' presents Mishima's art at its most mesmerising, complex and formidable" - Spectator

"Mishima is the Japanese Hemingway" - Life Magazine

"One of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century" - New Yorker

"He can be funny, even hilarious, but he is also capable of plunging into the dark psychic depths achieved by Hitchcock" - New York Times Book Review