Book description
Ry nosuke 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. 'Rash mon' and 'In a Bamboo
Grove' inspired Kurosawa's magnificent film and depict a past in which
morality is turned upside down, while tales such as 'The Nose', 'O-Gin'
and 'Loyalty' paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan
peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later
works such as 'Death Register', 'The Life of a Stupid Man' and 'Spinning
Gears', Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect,
revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely
moving impressionistic stories.
Akutagawa Ryunosuke, short-story writer, poet, and essayist, one of
the first Japanese modernists translated into English. He was born in
Tokyo in 1892, and began writing for student publications at the age
of ten. He graduated from Tokyo University in 1916 with an English
Literature degree and worked as a teacher before becoming a full time
writer in 1919. His mother had gone mad suddenly just months after his
birth and he was plagued by fear of inherited insanity all his life.
He killed himself in 1927.
Haruki Murakami (Introducer) has written eleven novels, eight
volumes of short stories and numerous works of non-fiction, as well as
translating much American literature into Japanese. His most famous
novels are Norwegian Wood, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and Kafka on
the Shore. Jay Rubin (Translator) has translated several of Murakami's
works into English and is also the author of Haruki Murakami and the
Music of Words. He has been professor of Japanese Literature at the
Universities of Washington and Harvard.
