No Longer Human
α’αααΈααααα βα’αα‘α·α ααααΌαα·αααα
Mine has been a life of much shame. I canβt even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.
Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu DazaiβsΒ No Longer HumanΒ narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a βclownβ 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.
Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan,Β No Longer HumanΒ is an important and unforgettable modern classic: βThe struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing.β (The Japan Times)
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α’αααΈβα’ααααα·αααα
The author of the global bestseller No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was famous for confronting head-on the social and moral crises of postwar Japan. He committed suicide by drowning in Tokyoβs Tamagawa Aqueduct.
Donald Keene, the author of dozens of books in both English and Japanese as well as the famed translator of Dazai, Kawabata, and Mishima, was the first non-Japanese to receive the Yomiuri Prize for Literature.
