Your purchase has been completed. Your documents are now available to view.
Changing the currency will empty your shopping cart.
John Nathan provides a lucid and vivid account of Natsume Sōseki, the father of the modern novel in Japan. This biography elevates Sōseki 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 twentieth-century modernism.
Alan Tansman, University of California, Berkeley: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.
[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.
Minae Mizumura, author of Inheritance from Mother: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.
Comprehensive and discerning. . . . A revealing portrait of a writer who deserves a new audience.
Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product.