The Best Japanese Short Stories
Works by 14 Modern Masters: Kawabata, Akutagawa and More
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Tuttle Publishing
Published:14th Mar '23
Should be back in stock very soon
An anthology of the greatest stories by modern Japanese masters (including previously overlooked women writers)!
Fourteen distinct voices are assembled in this one-of-a-kind anthology tracing a nation's changing social landscapes. Internationally renowned writers like Yasunari Kawabata, Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Junichi Watanabe are joined by three notable women writers whose works have not yet received sufficient attention—Kanoko Okamoto, Fumiko Hayashi and Yumiko Kurahashi.
Highlights of this anthology include:
- Kafu Nagai's bittersweet portrait of a privileged family's expiring existence in "The Fox"
- Ango Sakaguchi's heartening celebration of postwar chaos in "One Woman and the War"
- Fumiko Hayashi's unabashed exploration of female sexuality in "Borneo Diamond"
- Junichi Watanabe's chilling assessment of alienation and social dislocation in "Invitation to Suicide"
- Gishu Nakayama's look at an out-of-place prostitute recovering at a hot-spring resort in "Autumn Wind"
Through brilliant, highly-praised translations by Lane Dunlop, The Best Japanese Short Stories offers fascinating glimpses of a society embracing change while holding tenaciously onto the past. A new foreword by Alan Tansman provides insightful back stories about the authors and the literary backdrop against which they created these great works of modern world literature.
"Lane Dunlop's translations read elegantly, and his selection of modern Japanese Stories is both fresh and persuasive." --Donald Keene, Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature
"None of the stories are very long, but all of them are worth reading. […] they rarely follow plot lines, and few have what might be called a satisfying ending. Instead, each story whispers away, leaving a feeling of loss and contemplation, and mournful beauty." --Zack Davisson
"The beauty of Tuttle's new edition of The Best Japanese Short Stories, translated by Lane Dunlop, is that readers can take what they like from it. Here are tales with the simplicity of Hemingway and the intellectual heft of David Foster Wallace, set in places and historical moments too many of us have never explored…" --Book & Film Globe,The Best Japanese Short Stories: Hauntingly Splendid--New collection captures the tensions of a society in flux
ISBN: 9784805317297
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 255g
224 pages