人间失格

This book includes the most representative novels of Osamu Dazai, namely No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, and his literary essay I Heard It in This Way. No Longer Human is the last finished work of Osamu Dazai and it is regarded as the pyramid of Japanese ""private novels"". In the form of confession, it explores the cowardice deep in people's heart, discusses the qualification of being a human and points to the soul, making people unable to avoid. The Setting Sun tells the postwar pain and redemption of declining aristocrats in Japan and the ""setting sun clan"" becomes the pronoun of declining people. The Memorial of Osamu Dazai is also named ""Setting Sun Hall"". I Heard It in This Way is the response of Osamu Dazai to other writers' criticism on him in the literary world and it includes the criticism on some ""old famous writers"" and the explanation for himself. What's more, it states his views and attitude towards writing and can be regarded as his ""declaration of independence"" which shocked the literature world after publication. Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title). Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world . . . suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, . . . but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima.