Soseki – Modern Japan`s Greatest Novelist (Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture) - Hardcover

Nathan, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231171420 ISBN 13: 9780231171427

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was the father of the modern novel in Japan, chronicling the plight of bourgeois characters caught between familiar modes of living and the onslaught of Western values and conventions. Yet even though generations of Japanese high school students have been expected to memorize passages from his novels and he is routinely voted the most important Japanese writer in national polls, he remains less familiar to Western readers than authors such as Kawabata, Tanizaki, and Mishima. In this biography, John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of a great writer laboring to create a remarkably original oeuvre in spite of the physical and mental illness that plagued him all his life. He traces Soseki's complex and contradictory character, offering rigorous close readings of Soseki's groundbreaking experiments with narrative strategies, irony, and multiple points of view as well as recounting excruciating hospital stays and recurrent attacks of paranoid delusion. Drawing on previously untranslated letters and diaries, published reminiscences, and passages from Soseki's fiction, Nathan renders intimate scenes of the writer's life and distills a portrait of a tormented yet unflaggingly original author. The first full-length study of Soseki in fifty years, Nathan's biography elevates Soseki to his rightful place as a great synthesizer of literary traditions and a brilliant chronicler of universal experience who, no less than his Western contemporaries, anticipated the modernism of the twentieth century.

About this title

Review:

Nathan offers a lucid view of the life and works of the writer many consider to be Japan's most important, and best, novelist. He deftly shows how Sōseki's life reflects the many social and intellectual changes that occurred over the tumultuous decades of his lifetime--decades of Japan's transformation into a modern nation.--Alan Tansman, University of California, Berkeley

It's been half a century since the appearance of the most recent English-language biography of Natsume Sōseki, one of the giants of twentieth-century world literature, so the arrival of John Nathan's fine new study is cause for celebration. Sōseki's life story often reads like one of his novels, and Nathan captures it in prose worthy of his subject.--Michael Bourdaghs, University of Chicago

Sōseki captures the soul of Japan's greatest modern writer in the best tradition of biography. Here the venerated figure comes fully alive with his infuriating failings and astounding intelligence, his maddening ambitions and biting self-deprecations. The book also offers a vibrant portrayal of Japan's rapidly transforming society--an extraordinary feast.--Minae Mizumura, author of Inheritance from Mother

Comprehensive and discerning. . . . A revealing portrait of a writer who deserves a new audience.--Kirkus Reviews

[An] illuminating biography. . . . Nathan's incisive portrait of Sōseki as a troubled yet widely celebrated literary game changer--his image adorned the 1,000 banknote in 1984--will likely drive new readers to his fiction.--Publishers Weekly

A fine biographical work that also helpfully covers Sōseki's major works in quite good depth, Sōseki is a solid and interesting biography--M.A. Orthofer "Complete Review "

This biography and literary study describes a difficult, demanding man, plagued by poor physical and mental health, yet one who was also a master stylist with an extraordinary gift.--Times Higher Education

A vibrant portrayal of the transformation of a modern Japan as witnessed through the story of one of that country's best writers.--International Examiner

Anyone with an interest in Japanese literature will enjoy the book. Not only is it a nice introduction to his work, but it also provides fascinating insights into a life cut short. As such, Sōseki: Modern Japan's Greatest Novelist is a work to be recommended, an easy read about a great writer.--Tony's Reading List

[Natsume Sōseki's] life and work are explored insightfully in John Nathan's outstanding and cohesive literary biography.--Eileen Battersby "Financial Times "

About the Author:

John Nathan is the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Mishima: A Biography (1974) and Sony: The Private Life (1999), among others. He is the translator of Soseki's last novel, Light and Dark (Columbia, 2014), as well as of works by Yukio Mishima and Kenzaburo Oe. Nathan is also an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker.

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0231171420
• ISBN 13: 9780231171427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320