No Longer Human

15 November 2022

Territory Rights — Worldwide.

Osamu Dazai (Author), Donald Keene (Translator)

Description

Now in a gift cloth edition, No Longer Human ponders profound alienation

Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

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. His 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. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: “The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing.” (The Japan Times)

Reviews

"What I despise about Dazai is that he exposes precisely those things in myself that I most want to hide." — Yukio Mishima

"From the point of view of wholesome common sense, Dazai’s writings may be regarded as the soliloquies of a deviant." — Yasunari Kawabata

"No Longer Human is his masterpiece, though all his work is worthy. Dazai was an aristocratic tramp, a self described delinquent, yet he wrote with the forbearance of a fasting scribe." — Patit Smith

"Dazai’s brand of egoistic pessimism dovetails organically with the emo chic of this cultural moment." — Andrew Martin, The New York Times

Also By: Osamu Dazai View all by author...

  • The Setting Sun

    Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene

    Paperback, 1968

    This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956.
  • The Beggar Student

    Osamu Dazai, Sam Bett

    Paperback, 2024

    For fans of No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai's darkly bewitching novel about the small redemptions of being a pathetic, miserable writer
  • Self-Portraits: Stories

    Osamu Dazai, Ralph McCarthy

    Paperback, 2024

    Bringing together novelist Osamu Dazai's best autobiographical shorts in a single, slim volume, Self-Portraitsshows the legendary writer at his best—and his worst
  • The Flowers of Buffoonery

    Osamu Dazai, Sam Bett

    Paperback, 2023

    For the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel toNo Longer Human
  • The Setting Sun

    Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene

    Hardback, 2022

    Now in a beautiful gift cloth edition, a masterpiece of postwar Japanese literature

Also By: Donald Keene View all by author...

  • The Setting Sun

    Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene

    Paperback, 1968

    This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956.
  • The Setting Sun

    Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene

    Hardback, 2022

    Now in a beautiful gift cloth edition, a masterpiece of postwar Japanese literature
  • Early Light

    Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene, Ralph McCarthy

    Hardback, 2022

    Early Light gathers three tales by Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular No Longer Human
  • Early Light

    Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene, Ralph McCarthy

    E Book, 2022

    Early Light gathers three tales by Osamu Dazai, author of the wildly popular No Longer Human
  • The Setting Sun

    Osamu Dazai, Donald Keene

    E Book, 2014

    This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956.

Hardback

9780811232432

142 x 213 mm • 192 pages

£19.99

Add to Basket