SOURCE: "A World Distilled: The Short Fiction of Japan's Nobel laureate," in Chicago Tribune—Books, August 21, 1988, p. 7.

In the laudatory review below, Seibold admires the polish and precision of the pieces in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.

Born in 1899, the same year as Hemingway and Borges, Yasunari Kawabata was venerated in his native Japan, and his writing attracted as much attention from the West as that of any of his compatriots since lady Murasaki. His career climaxed in 1968 with his being awarded the Nobel Prize, and to this date he is the only Far Eastern writer to be so honored.

The translators and publishers of Palm-of-the-Hand Stories take their title from a volume Kawabata published in the 1920s, at the beginning of his career, though this collection includes stories of similar scope that he wrote throughout his life; the final piece here is dated 1972, the year of his suicide.

Better than...