"The Sea of Fertility is a literary legacy on the scale of Proust's" National Review

The story of one man's obsessive pursuit of a beautiful woman and his equally passionate search for enlightenment, The Temple of Dawn powerfully dramatises the Japanese experience from the eve of World War II through the post-war era.

Honda, a brilliant lawyer and man of reason, is called to Bangkok on legal business, where he is granted an audience with a young Thai princess - an encounter that radically alters the course of his life. In spite of all reason, he is convinced she is a reincarnated spirit, and undertakes a long, arduous pilgrimage to the holy places of India, where, in the climactic scene, he encounters her once more, only to have his new found beliefs shattered and his life bereft of meaning.