Bøker av Osamu Dazai

No one really understands how we suffer. One day, when we're adults, we may come to recall this suffering, this misery, as silly and laughable, but how are we to get through the long, hateful period until then? No one bothers to teach us that. Osamu Dazai was a master raconteur who plumbed-in an addictive, easy style-the absurd complexities of life in a society whose expectations cannot be met without sacrificing one's individual ideals on the altar of conformity. The gravitational pull of his prose is on full display in these stories. In "Lantern," a young woman, in love with a well-born but impoverished student, shoplifts a bathing suit for him-and ends up in the local newspaper indicted as a crazed, degenerate communist. In "Chiyojo," a high-school girl shows early promise as a writer, but as her uncle and mother relentlessly push her to pursue a literary career, she must ask herself: is this what I really want? Or am I supposed to fulfill  their own frustrated ambitions? In "Shame," a young reader writes a fan letter to a writer she admires, only to find out, upon visiting him, that he's a bourgeoise sophisticate nothing like the desperate rebels he portrays, and decides (in true Dazai style): "Novelists are human trash. No, they're worse than that; they're demons. . . They write nothing but lies."This collection of 14 tales-a half-dozen of which have never before appeared in English-is based on a Japanese collection of, as Dazai described them, "soliloquies by female narrators." No One Knows includes the quietly brilliant long story "Schoolgirl" and shows the fiction of this 20th-century genius in a fresh light.

A fictional thirty-something writer named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher a terrible manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Shortly afterward, while moping around a park in suburban Tokyo, he spots a figure drowning in a nearby aqueduct.He doesn't want to become a witness to a suicide and eventually decides to flee the park. But as he is leaving, he trips over the boy who had been drowning, and the two begin an unlikely conversation that turns into an intellectual spat. Hoping to ingratiate himself with the boy--a high-school dropout--Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform that very night as the live narrator of a film screening in the boy's stead...So begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where there is glamor in destitution and glimmerings of truth in intellectual one-upmanship. Replete with settings straight out of the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and echoes of the themes in No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.

"Dazai's brand of egoistic pessimism dovetails organically with the emo chic of this cultural moment and with the inner lives of teenagers of all eras." --Andrew Martin, The New York Times "... translator O'Brien excels, his unembellished use of language allowing the comically dry but fraught moments of Dazai's prose to flourish." --Asian Review of Books Best-known for his novels No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, Dazai was also an acclaimed writer of short stories, experimenting with a wide variety of styles and bringing to each work a sophisticated sense of humor, a broad empathy for the human condition and a tremendous literary talent. The twenty stories in this collection include: Memories -- An autobiographical tale in which Dazai relates episodes from his own childhood and adolescence, showing his relationship with his family and his tendency towards introspection and self-dramatizationOn the Question of Apparel -- A comic tour-de-force in which Dazai examines the hold that fashion has over him and how it relates to his own pathetic self-imageA Poor Man's Got His Pride -- A retelling of a story by 18th-century master of burlesque fiction Ihara Saikaku, about a fallen samurai who lives in povertyThe Sound of Hammering -- A love story set against the backdrop of the rebuilding of Tokyo after the city was totally destroyed during World War TwoAnd sixteen other stories!>**Recommended for readers 16 years & up. Not intended for high school classroom use due to adult content.**

"Art dies the moment it acquires authority." So said Japan's quintessential rebel writer Osamu Dazai, who, disgusted with the hypocrisy of every kind of establishment, from the nation's obsolete aristocracy to its posturing, warmongering generals, went his own way, even when that meant his death-and the death of others. Faced with pressure to conform, he declared his individuality to the world-in all its self-involved, self-conscious and self-hating glory. "Art", he wrote, "is 'I'."In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai's life mirrored his art and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing. And that has made him a hero to generations of readers who see laid bare, in his works, the painful, impossible contradictions inherent in the universal commandment of social life-fit in and do as you are told-as well as the possibility, however desperate, of defiance. Long out of print, these stories will be a revelation to the legions of new fans of No Longer Human, The Setting Sun and The Flowers of Buffoonery.

A classic of Japanese literature, brought to life in English & manga for the first time! This is the first manga edition in English of The Setting Sun, Osamu Dazai's classic novel, often considered his masterpiece. Set in the aftermath of World War II, this is the story of Kazuko, a strong-willed young woman from an aristocratic family that has fallen into poverty since the war. The book follows Kazuko's journey as she and her family struggle to survive and adapt to the harsh new conditions. In addition to having to move from Tokyo to the countryside, where she is forced to work in the fields to support the family, she has to deal with a difficult divorce, the birth of a stillborn child, and the return of her drug-addicted brother from the war. This gripping and inspiring portrait of one woman's determination to survive in a society that is in the grip of a social and moral crisis tells one story in a fast-changing world, with universal themes that resonates with readers today. After Soseki Natsume, Osamu Dazai is Japan's most popular writer. Dazai is enjoying a surge in interest among young people today thanks to the success of the manga, anime and film series Bungo Stray Dogs, whose protagonist, a detective named Osamu Dazai, is based on the real-life author.

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.

Another spectacular collaboration from the Maiden's Bookshelf series, this dark and intense fable by the great giant of postward literature is brought to vivid life by contemporary master Nekosuke.Suwa, a charcoal burner's daughter, lives together with her father in a small village at a foot of a mountain so remote it doesn't even appear on maps.Slowly she comes to realize the dark futility of her life, leading to a strange and elliptical transformation...Dazai depicts the adolescent awakening to death and the desire to escape through this quiet and ominous tale.

"I've led a life full of shame. Human beings are a complete mystery to me."This manga version of novelist Osamu Dazai's masterpiece NO LONGER HUMAN-the #2 bestselling novel of all time in Japan-tells the story of Yozo Oba, a young man growing up in Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II, who finds himself caught between the disintegration of the traditions of his aristocratic provincial family and the impact of the new postwar world. Oba is tormented by a failure to find any value in himself or in human relationships, despite being surrounded by women who love him. He creates the persona of a buffoon who mocks himself while entertaining others. But inside he is tortured, and as he moves from childhood to adulthood he becomes addicted to sex and alcohol. Largely autobiographical, No Longer Human explores Dazai's own sense of failure and alienation which drove him to self-destruct with alcohol and numerous suicide attempts. Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) is Japan's second most popular novelist (after Soseki), and his works are seeing a huge surge in popularity among young people worldwide thanks to the success of the recent manga, anime and film series Bungo Stray Dogs, whose protagonist, a detective called Osamu Dazai, has similar character traits to Yozo Oba. Fans of manga and anime are turning to the original No Longer Human novel, whose themes of alienation from society and an inability to reconcile social appearances with inner self-told with great wit, irony and pathos-strike a deep chord among readers today. **Recommended for readers ages 16+ due to mature themes and graphic content**

Place: Tsugaru in Aomori Prefecture, Japan Time: Spring 1944As World War II was coming to an end, Osamu Dazai (born Shuji Tsushima) returned to his home in the northern tip of Honshu, Japan on assignment from a publisher to travel and write about the part of Japan where he was born and raised.He writes with humor and warmth about old friends, the people (family and servants) who nurtured him, his obsession with crabs, and his worries over sake in times of rationing. He writes with pride about his home even as he learns about some of its customs and history for the first time. This travel journal is part travelogue, part history lesson, and part love story.Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was a twentieth century Japanese author. He is best known for the novels The Setting Sun and No Longer Human.

Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew. "Everything's gone," the father explains to his daughter: "Mr. Rabbit, our shoes, the Ogigari house, the Chino house, they all burned up," "Yeah, they all burned up," she said, still smiling."One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji," another autobiographical tale, is much more comic: Dazai finds himself unable to escape the famous views, the beauty once immortalized by Hokusai and now reduced to a cliche. In the end, young girls torment him by pressing him into taking their photo before the famous peak: "Goodbye," he hisses through his teeth, "Mount Fuji. Thanks for everything. Click."And the final story is "Villon's Wife," a small masterpiece, which relates the awakening to power of a drunkard's wife. She transforms herself into a woman not to be defeated by anything, not by her husband being a thief, a megalomaniacal writer, and a wastrel. Single-handedly, she saves the day by concluding that "There's nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive."

From Wikipedia:No Longer Human (

From Wikipedia:The Setting Sun (

A new translation of one of the greatest works of postwar Japanese literature, acutely capturing modern anxiety and alienation