The latest addition to my website is Fumiko Enchi‘s 女面 (Masks). This is a beautifully written book about masks (both real and figurative ones) as well as about various other topics but, in particular, love and betrayal and death. Mieko Toganō is a widow and a poet. She lives with her daughter-in-law, Yasuko, whose husband, Mieko’s son, Akio, died in an avalanche on Mount Fuji. Mieko subtly controls those around her, particularly Yusako. When two men, Ibuki, a married men and former colleague of Akio and adviser to Yasuko on Japanese literature, and Mikamé, a single man and doctor, both fall in love with Yasuko, it is Mieko who manoeuvres and controls the two men for her own nefarious ends. Both are unaware of this control and neither is a match for her. Mieko, though married to a very rich man, from a distinguished Japanese family, has her own past, which she has more or less concealed. With spirit possession and classical Japanese literature, particularly The Tale of the Genji (which Enchi translated into modern Japanese) added to the mix, we are given a very rich, complex and beautifully written novel in relatively few pages.