Description

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The classic Japanese novel of alienation and the search for meaning and connection in the modern world, in a brilliant new translation—for fans of Salinger, Camus, Sartre, Hesse, and the hit anime series Bungo Stray Dogs, which features a character based on No Longer Human’s author, Osamu Dazai

A Penguin Classics Graphic Deluxe Edition

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. Oba Yozo’s 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. Semi-autobiographical, No Longer Human is the final completed work of one of Japan’s most important writers. It has come to “echo the sentiments of youth” (The Mainichi Daily News) from post-war Japan to the postmodern society of technology. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is a powerful exploration of an individual’s alienation from society.

About the Author

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Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) was one of the most important Japanese novelists of the twentieth century. His many published works include No Longer Human, The Setting Sun, Schoolgirl, and A Shameful Life. Dazai died by suicide at the age of thirty-eight.

David Boyd (translation, introduction, notes) has twice won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He has translated fiction by Mieko Kawakami, Izumi Suzuki, and Hiroko Oyamada, among others. He is an assistant professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.