Thirst for Love is a 1950 novel by the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. The word "kawaki" literally means thirst, but has a sense of parched dryness associated with it. The title of the movie version has also been translated as Longing for Love. Thirst for Love is Mishima's third novel, following the immensely successful Confessions of a Mask . Unlike the coming of age of a male narrator in Confessions, Mishima may have deliberately moved to a woman protagonist and a third person narrative. Donald Keene says of Thirst for Love that it is "a youthful work, but one of Mishima's best".. The novel... centers on the experience of Etsuko, a woman who has moved into the house of her in-laws following the death of her husband Ryosuke from typhoid. There she falls into a physical relationship with her father-in-law which both repulses and numbs her. She comes to develop romantic feelings for the young gardener Saburo, who is oblivious of her interest, and turns out to be having an affair with the maid Miyo.
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