Akutagawa Ryunosuke was among the first prewar Japanese writers to achieve wide foreign readership, renowned for his technical virtuosity and his ability to fuse traditional material with a modern sensibility. His work stood apart from the mundane accounts of contemporary novelists, often exploring the ugliness of human egoism and the value of art. Akutagawa's brilliant, tightly organized short stories reinterpret classical works and historical incidents from a distinctly modern standpoint, making them compelling for readers.
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan's foremost stylists - a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. This work features stories such as Rashomon, In a Bamboo Grove, The Nose, O-Gin, Loyalty, Death Register, The Life of a Stupid Man and Spinning Gears.
From the literary giant of Japan, who is often referred to as the "Godfather of the Japanese short story," and after whom the most coveted literary prize of Japan is named, the Akutagawa Prize, comes this collection of three of his greatest short stories.Akutagawa is probably best known for his story "Rasho ̄mon" which was adapted for the screen by legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. While he died at the young age of 35, the author penned well over 150 short stories, including "Cogwheels" which he wrote just before his suicide in 1927. Accompanied by stunning woodcuts by renowned artists Naoko Matsubara, and expertly translated by Howard Norman, the three stories compiled here reflect the haunting, precise and brilliant style of Akutagawa and offer a superb entry point to his work. Haruki Murakami aptly described Akutagawa's writing when he remarked, "the flow of his language is the best feature of Akutagawa's style. Never stagnant, it moves along like a living thing... His choice of words is intuitive, natural--and beautiful."
Introducing Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Celebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil. Akutagawa was one of the towering figures of modern Japanese literature, and is considered the father of the Japanese short story. This paradigmatic selection, which includes the stories that inspired Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, showcases the terrible beauty, cynicism, sublime pain and absurd humour of his writing. 'One never tires of reading and re-reading his best works. The elegantly spare style has a truly spine-tingling brilliance' - Haruki Murakami
From one of the masters of the short story comes an unforgettable collection of haunting and strange tales.
Akutagawa's magical final work is a short novel with a magic spell all its own--poignant, fantastical, wry, melancholic, and witty
'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.' Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories is also available in Penguin Classics.
'One never tires of reading and re-reading his best works. Akutagawa was a born short-story writer' - Haruki Murakami
Deftly translated by Ryan Choi, these stories and vignettes (plus two short plays) all have radical brevity in common, demonstrating that Akutagawa was an early and prescient master of what we now call "flash" fiction and non-fiction. With a striking economy of means, the author gives us vivid, eccentric, feeling characters, young and elderly, learned and unpolished, urban and rural. Akutagawa's observations and notes âe" on dreams, on being impersonated, on mountain towns, winter nights, university life and, poignantly, the Great KantÅ Earthquake âe" are as rich and evocative as his stories, with which they share a mesmerising quality. Â First published in Japan between 1914 and 1927 (some posthumously), these works have been overlooked in favour of Akutagawa's longer tales, which have formed the basis of his reputation in the West. In translating them, Choi rounds out our understanding of this master stylist.Â
"Clear-eyed glimpses of human behavior in the extremities of poverty, stupidity, greed, vanity… Story-telling of an unconventional sort, with most of the substance beneath the shining, enameled surface." — The New York Times Book Review This collection of six short stories, most of which have never been translated before, includes "In a Grove", a psychologically sophisticated tale about murder, rape, and suicide; "Rashomon", the story of a thief scared into honesty by an encounter with a ghoul; and "Kesa and Morito", the story of man driven to kill someone he doesn't hate by a lover whom he doesn't love. "There are enough Swiftian touches in Akutagawa to show his hatred of stupidity, greed, hypocrisy and the rising jingoism of the day. But Akutagawa's artistic integrity kept him from joining his contemporaries in the easy social criticism or naive introspection…What he did was question the values of his society, dramatize the complexities of human psychology, and study, with a Zen taste for paradox, the precarious balance of illusion and reality."—Howard Hibbett, from the Introduction of Rashomon and Other Stories Classic Japanese stories include: In a Grove Rashomon Yam Gruel The Martyr Kesa and Morito The Dragon
