Golden Kin-Yōbi: 1 - Penguin Modern Classics

Welcome to Golden Kin-Yōbi, our regular Friday giveaway where you can win some great J-Lit.  Why the name?  Well, as some of you may know, the first character used in Japanese when writing Friday means 'gold', and hopefully many of you will strike gold over the next few weeks :)

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Today's first giveaway, one to kick off this year's January in Japan, comes to us courtesy of Penguin Modern Classics (UK), and they have kindly offered four books as prizes, including worldwide postage to the winners - and great books they are too.  All four are by the first Japanese winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (and J-Lit Giant), Yasunari Kawabata, and they're all great reads.

The four up for grabs are Snow Country (an elegant novella set in the mountains of northern Honshu), Thousand Cranes (another short piece which looks at traditional manners and customs), Beauty and Sadness (an excellent story of an affair gone sour) and The Sound of the Mountain (my favourite Kawabata, a tale of an old man coming to grips with mortality).  This last book is the choice for the second of our readalongs - with luck, the winner may even get their copy in time to join in!

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So, if you'd like to win one of these books, simply comment below, leaving your name, an e-mail address and the name of the book you'd like to win.  There's no need to follow me, either here, on Facebook or on Twitter (unless you want to, of course!) - anyone can enter, and everyone has an equal chance of winning :)

Entries will close at 8 p.m. (AEST) on Thursday, January the 8th (that's 9 a.m. on Thursday, London time), and the winners will be announced in the next Golden Kin-Yōbi post (the winners, naturally, will be chosen entirely randomly, one way or another).  So, what are you waiting for?  Get commenting, and good luck!