"The wild maples in the mountains of his old home."

Shingo is getting old. His memory fails him randomly, he low-key dislikes his wife, son and daughter, and has a weird paternal/sexual obsession with his son's wife. At night, he hears the mountain calling - which he interprets as heralding his approaching death.

So you can guess it's probably not the cheeriest or enjoyable of reads. But even in translation Kawabata's prose is so beautiful, especially when he turns his eye to the scenery, plants, nature and seasons surrounding the home of Shingo and his family. Like the quote above, you'll be reading and then be suddenly struck by the most elegant, evocative sentence.