John Darwin Van Fleet goes into extensive detail in his Asian Review of Books review for the new Mark Gibeau translation of the Osamu Dazai classic, A Shameful Life: Ningen shikkaku.
There are a ton of fantastic pieces of information in this essay/review on the lives of a few literary giants you may not have known. Van Fleet also says:
"Oba Yozo, the central character and anti-hero of Dazai Osamu’s Ningen Shikkaku, is as familiar to Japanese readers as Holden Caulfield is to English readers. The Catcher in the Rye still sells a million copies per year, in dozens of languages, while in Japanese only a few novels, notably Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro, routinely outsell Ningen Shikkaku. Catcher, however, pales beside Ningen as a literary achievement."
Read the full review here: http://asianreviewofbooks.com/content/a-shameful-life-ningen-shikkaku-by-osamu-dazai/
Grab a copy of the book here: https://www.stonebridge.com/catalog/a-shameful-life-ningen-shikkaku
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