"A genuine tour-de-force" Lesley McDowell. An eminent British writer returns to the resort hotel in the Japanese mountains where he once spent a beautiful, snowed-in winter. It was there he fell in love and wrote his best-selling novel, The Waterwheel, accusing America of being in denial about the horrific aftermath of the Tokyo firebombings and the nuclear destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As we learn more about his earlier life, however - as a student in Bloomsbury, involved with a famous American painter - we realise that he too is in denial, trying to escape the past events that are now rapidly catching up with him. An Exquisite Sense of What is Beautiful is a sweeping novel of East and West, love and war, truth and delusion. Featuring richly drawn characters and a narrative that perfectly builds the tension up to the explosive climax, this book has all the hallmarks of a modern classic.