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I liked this novel but I think my appreciation may have been improved by a better understanding of Japanese culture between the wars. That's one of my favorite periods to read in Brit Lit, but my knowledge of this period in Japan is minimal.
Like other readers, the novel put me in mind of Lolita and I can see the Madame Bovary comparisons. It also reminded me of the narrator's obsession with Albertine in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Joji's paranoiac jealousy (though justified) is very similar to that in both The Prisoner and The Fugitive. Unlike Proust, though, Tanizaki doesn't stretch the obsession over hundreds of pages. Not that those hundreds of pages in Proust aren't wonderful, it does get just a tad tedious.
Like other readers, the novel put me in mind of Lolita and I can see the Madame Bovary comparisons. It also reminded me of the narrator's obsession with Albertine in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Joji's paranoiac jealousy (though justified) is very similar to that in both The Prisoner and The Fugitive. Unlike Proust, though, Tanizaki doesn't stretch the obsession over hundreds of pages. Not that those hundreds of pages in Proust aren't wonderful, it does get just a tad tedious.