A Fool's Words (Thirteen Stories and Essays by Japan's Master Storyteller)

"Akutagawa displays an insightful and keenly creative intelligence in prose so lucid its sophistication is hardly visible." —The Guardian

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), "the Father of the Japanese short story," wrote 150 stories during his brief career and is widely acclaimed as Japan's greatest storyteller. This new anthology, published exactly a century after his death, includes fresh translations of well-known classics as well as never-before-translated works:

• A Fool's Words: Aphorisms and reflections on life and literature, full of imagination and insight; this is Akutagawa at his most quotable, and the first complete English translation of this essay
• The Mandarins: Irritation turns to epiphany in this story of an unwelcome fellow passenger on a steam train journey
• Cogwheels: An extended nightmare vision of the city of Tokyo, which Akutagawa travels through like a visitor to hell, unable to escape his demons
• The Life of an Idiot: A fragmented autobiography, depicting key moments in Akutagawa's life and artistic development from his book-loving youth until just before his suicide
• The Light of Creation: Nineteenth-century Japan comes to vivid life in this story of the novelist Kyokutei Bakin that gives indirect insight into Akutagawa's views on writing
• Ababababa: The story of a young Akutagawa and his fixation with a woman in his local store
• Plus seven other fascinating essays and tales

This is an absolute "must-have" for every serious fan of Japanese literature!

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