Author: Soseki Natsume
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To the Spring Equinox and Beyond
Legendary Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume dissects the human personality in all its complexity in this unforgettable narrative. Keitaro, a recent college graduate, lives a life intertwined with several other characters, each carrying their own emotional baggage. Romantic, practical, and philosophical themes enable Soseki to explore the very meaning of life.
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Sanshiro
One of Soseki’s most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving ‘real world’ of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki’s lively humour and our awareness of Sanshiro’s doomed…
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I am a cat
Written over the course of 1904-6, Soseki’s comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the follies of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him. The New Yorker…
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The three cornered world
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The Miner
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Ten nights of dream ; Hearing things ; The heredity of taste
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The heredity of taste
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Kusamakura
Natsume Soseki’s Kusamakura follows its nameless young artist-narrator on a meandering walking tour of the mountains. At the inn at a hot spring resort, he has a series of mysterious encounters with Nami, the lovely young daughter of the establishment. Nami, or ‘beauty,’ is the center of this elegant novel, the still point around which…
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Nowaki
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Mon (The gate)
The Gate describes the world of the humble clerk Sosuke and his wife Oyone, living in quiet obscurity in a house at the bottom of a cliff. Childless, the couple find themselves having to take responsibility for Sosuke’s younger brother. Oyone’s health begins to fail, and news that Oyone’s ex-husband will be visiting near by…