The Silver Fifty Sen Peices

I was surprised to be reading this story in British Literature, because the author is not British but Japanese. The story is written by Yasunari Kawabata,who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. Set in pre- and post- World War II Japan, the story is very short, only consisting of three scenes. In the first scene, the main character Yoshiko buys a glass paperweight with a carving of a dog after much deliberation. Yoshiko and her mother are shopping in the next scene. In the last scene, Yoshiko huddles in the ruins of her neighborhood and realizes how much she has lost to the war. It's amazing how the author uses so few words to strongly bring into focus how the inconstancy of life. The method Kawabata uses to state his message is subtle, but that's where the beauty of this story lies.