Tanizaki's masterpiece is the story of four sisters, and the declining fortunes of a traditional Japanese family. It is a loving and nostalgic recreation of the sumptuous, intricate upper-class life of Osaka immediately before World War Two. With surgical precision, Tanizaki lays bare the sinews of pride, and brings a vanished era to vibrant life.

Junichiro Tanizaki was born in 1886 in Tokyo, where his family owned printing establishment. He studied Japanese literature at Tokyo Imperial University, and his first published work, a one-act play, appeared in 1910 in a literary magazine he helped to found. Tanizaki lived in the cosmopolitan Tokyo area until the earthquake of 1923, when he moved to the gentler and more cultivated Kyoto-Osaka region, the scene ofThe Makioka Sisters.There he became absorbed in the Japanese past and all his most important works were written from this point, among themSome Prefer Nettles(1929),Arrowroot(1931),The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi(1935), several modern versions ofThe Tale of Genji(1941, 1954 and 1965),The Makioka Sisters(1943-48),Captain Shigemoto's Mother(1949),The Key(1956) andDiary of a Mad Old Man(1961). By 1930 he had gained such renown that an edition of his complete works was published and he was awarded an Imperial Award for Cultural Merit in 1949. In 1964 he was elected an honorary Member of the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the first Japanese citizen ever to recieve this honour. Tanizaki died in 1965.

'The outstanding Japanese novelist of the century...The Makioka Sisters is his greatest book' Edmund White, New York Times Book Review>