The Key Author:Junichiro Tanizaki THE KEY is a story of a middle-aged professor with an obsessive fear of losing his sexual vigor, who frenziedly tries to arouse Ikuko, his wife of 30 years, by resorting to various stimulants and finally to jealousy and voyeurism. They record their separate reactions in diaries - whose interweaving recounts the steady pathological decline of the... more »ir diseased physical rapport.
Before his death a few years ago, Tanizaki was one of the most frequently mentioned candidates for the Nobel Prize in literature. His style in the novel has been compared by critics to that one of Andre Gide.
"Compelling and psychologically convincing." - Springfield Republican
"A story about sex and marraige that is as explicit as any novel on the theme since Lady Chatterley's Lover." - Time
"A study of emotional and physical torture which is likely to shock." - Time Literary Supplement« less