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Kokoro

Author Natsume Soseki
Introduction by Meredith McKinney
Translated by Meredith McKinney
Notes by Meredith McKinney
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Paperback
$17.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Classics
5.06"W x 7.75"H x 0.7"D   | 7 oz | 56 per carton
On sale Feb 23, 2010 | 256 Pages | 9780143106036
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“Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature.”—Haruki Murakami

The father of modern Japanese literature's best-loved novel, in its first new English translation in half a century
 
No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoro—meaning "heart"—is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls "Sensei." Haunted by tragic secrets that have cast a long shadow over his life, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with guilt, and revealing, in the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his moral anguish and his student's struggle to understand it, the profound cultural shift from one generation to the next that characterized Japan in the early twentieth century.
"This elegant novel...suffuses the reader with a sense of old Japan." —Los Angeles Times 

"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature." —Haruki Murakami
Nick Bradley is the author of THE CAT AND THE CITY (2020) and FOUR SEASONS IN JAPAN (2023). In 2024 he was chosen by The British Council and The National Centre for Writing as one of ten rising stars in UK writing. His work has so far been translated into twenty languages.


He lived in Japan for many years where he worked as a translator, and currently teaches on the Creative Writing master's programme at the University of Cambridge and also taught on the Creative Writing Prose Fiction MA at UEA. View titles by Natsume Soseki

About

“Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature.”—Haruki Murakami

The father of modern Japanese literature's best-loved novel, in its first new English translation in half a century
 
No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoro—meaning "heart"—is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls "Sensei." Haunted by tragic secrets that have cast a long shadow over his life, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with guilt, and revealing, in the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his moral anguish and his student's struggle to understand it, the profound cultural shift from one generation to the next that characterized Japan in the early twentieth century.

Praise

"This elegant novel...suffuses the reader with a sense of old Japan." —Los Angeles Times 

"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature." —Haruki Murakami

Author

Nick Bradley is the author of THE CAT AND THE CITY (2020) and FOUR SEASONS IN JAPAN (2023). In 2024 he was chosen by The British Council and The National Centre for Writing as one of ten rising stars in UK writing. His work has so far been translated into twenty languages.


He lived in Japan for many years where he worked as a translator, and currently teaches on the Creative Writing master's programme at the University of Cambridge and also taught on the Creative Writing Prose Fiction MA at UEA. View titles by Natsume Soseki

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