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The Flowers of Buffoonery
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Check link for latest rating. ( 10,122 ratings, 1,495 reviews)
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The Flowers of Buffoonery
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See moreFor the first time in English, Osamu Dazai’s hilariously comic and deeply moving prequel to No Longer Human
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.
While No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love, and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in prewar Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai's masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai offers an introspective look at human nature, resonating with readers for its raw honesty and self-reflection. Yukio Mishima's view underscores Dazai's unsettling talent for unearthing personal truths and vulnerabilities.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780811234542
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 07 March 2023
Country: United States
Imprint: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Contributors:
- Translated by Sam Bett
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 8.0mm
Width: 132.0mm
Height: 203.0mm
Weight: 111g
Pages: 96
About the Author
Osamu Dazai was born in 1909 into a powerful landowning family of northern Japan. A brilliant student, he entered the French department of Tokyo University in 1930, but later boasted that in the five years before he left without a degree, he had never attended a lecture. Dazai was famous for confronting head-on the social and moral crises of postwar Japan before he committed suicide by throwing himself into Tokyo’s Tamagawa Aqueduct. His body was found on what would have been his 39th birthday. Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator whose credits include Star by Yukio Mishima. Working with David Boyd, he co-translated the Mieko Kawakami novels Heaven, shortlisted for the International Booker Prize; All the Lovers in the Night, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; and Breasts and Eggs.
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