The beggar student / by Osamu Dazai ; translated by Sam Bett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dazai, Osamu, 1909-1948, author.

Contributor:

Bett, Sam, 1986- translator.

Series:

New Directions paperbook ; 1618.

New Directions paperbook ; 1618

Standardized Title:

Kojiki gakusei. English

Language:

English

Japanese

Subjects (All):

Authors--Fiction.

Authors.

Teenagers--Fiction.

Teenagers.

Genre:

novellas.

Novellas.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

73 pages ; 21 cm.

Edition:

First New Directions edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2024.

Summary:

"A fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher a terrible manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Shortly afterward, while moping around a park in suburban Tokyo, he spots someone drowning in a nearby aqueduct. He doesn't want to become a witness to a suicide and eventually decides to flee the park. But as he is leaving, he trips over the boy who had been drowning, and the two begin an unlikely conversation that turns into an intellectual spat. Hoping to ingratiate himself with the boy-a high-school dropout-Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in the boy's stead that very night as the live narrator of a film screening . . . So begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where there is glamor in destitution, and intellectual one-upmanship reveals glimmers of truth. Replete with settings incorporated into the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and with echoes of No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best"-- Provided by publisher.

Notes:

Translated from the Japanese.

"Originally published in Japanese as Kojiki gakusei"--Title page verso.

ISBN:

9780811238588

081123858X

OCLC:

1423495348

Publisher Number:

90100896175