Kokoro (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780143106036)

"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.

Author: Natsume Soseki
ISBN-10: 0143106031
ISBN-13: 9780143106036
Publisher: Penguin Group
Language: English
Published: 02/23/2010
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.76h x 5.02w x 0.69d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 02/15/2010 pg. 37