Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Haruki Murakami (Introduction), Jay Rubin (Translator)

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Woven with themes that are wholly Japanese, this collection of short stories boasts characters from the enthralling feudal period of Japan and beyond. And yet, the humanity found within each tale is timeless and universal, the humor is on point and the imagination makes for a rollicking adventure.

Ryünosuke 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. ‘Rashömon’ 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141902876
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	04/05/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	477,814
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	11
	In a Grove	17
	Rashomon	31
	Yam Gruel	41
	The Martyr	66
	Kesa and Morito	82
	The Dragon	94

Editorial Reviews

These six very different titles are the latest crop of Penguin's redesigned "Classics Deluxe Editions" Each volume features kick-ass covers drawn by some of today's top graphic artists, including Frank Miller, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Thomas Ott, Chester Brown, and Tomer Hanuka, with introductions by the likes of Jonathan Lethem and Doris Lessing. Note that the de Sade cover features some nudity and the Lawrence graphics include comics using the F-word and depicting sex acts, so proceed with caution (you'll laugh, but some of your patrons may not). Nonetheless, all beauties. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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