Name: Early Light (Storybook nd Series)
SKU: 54271524
Price: 27.39 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Osamu Dazai

portada Early Light (Storybook nd Series)

Type

Physical Book

Author

Osamu Dazai

Translated by

Donald Keene

Ralph McCarthy

Publisher

New Directions Publishing Corporation

Language

English

Pages

Format

Hardcover

Dimensions

23.5x15.6x1.2 cm

Weight

0.25 kg.

ISBN13

9780811231985

Synopsis "Early Light (Storybook nd Series)"

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."

Osamu Dazai

(Author)

View Author's Page

(Pseudonym of Tsushima Shuji; Kanagi, 1909 - Tokyo, 1948) Japanese writer. Born from the disillusionment prevalent in his country after the end of World War II, Osamu Dazai's last novels expressed the feelings of a generation that had witnessed the collapse of their traditional values: The Setting Sun (1947), perhaps his most famous work, focuses on the decline of the Japanese nobility after the defeat in the war, while his last book, No Longer Human (1948), narrates in an autobiographical tone the frustration over the national debacle. Known for his ironic and somber wit and the brilliant fantasy of his novels and stories, his obsession with suicide and his constant search for a deeper truth would make him a cult figure among the young readers of his country.

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