Translator: McKinney, Meredith
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The tale of Saigyo
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White-haired melody
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Ravine and other stories
The four works in this collection are dreamlike evocations of the inner lives of ordinary people. In incantatory prose, the stories portray a world of sounds, sensations and portents, all seething beneath the plain veneer of Japanese life.
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The pillow book
A translation of the idiosyncratic diary of a C10 court lady in Heian Japan. Along with the Tale of Genji, it is one of the major Japanese classics.
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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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Kokoro
No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Kokoro, the last novel Natsume Soseki complete before his death in 1916. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoro, meaning “heart,” is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder…