Natsume Soseki

New in Penguin Japanese Classics - Japan's favourite novel about growing up and finding yourself. Introducing Penguin Japanese Classics - a collection of some of Japan's most celebrated and ground-breaking 20th-century writers, with covers inspired by Japanese art and design. Taking us from a sun-drenched affair in a seaside town to an underground 'ark' full of shadows and eccentrics, with...

"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature." - Haruki Murakami The father of modern Japanese literature's best-loved novel, in its first new English translation in half a century. No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in...

The original Japanese Cat-Lit Classic. Now published in a new translation by Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City. Discover the original Japanese Cat classic, now in a vibrant new translation by Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City. I am a Cat. But I still don't have a name... Once a stray kitten, I Am...

Jay Rubin's translation of Soseki's cherished novel, new to Penguin Classics. One of Soseki's most beloved works of fiction, the novel depicts the 23-year-old Sanshiro leaving the sleepy countryside for the first time in his life to experience the constantly moving 'real world' of Tokyo, its women and university. In the subtle tension between our appreciation of Soseki's lively humour...

One of Japan's most treasured novels, new to Penguin Classics. Botchan is a modern young man from the Tokyo metropolis, sent to the ultra-traditional Matsuyama district as a Maths teacher after the death of his parents. Cynical, rebellious, and immature, Botchan finds himself facing several tests, from the pupils — prone to playing tricks on their new, naive teacher; the...

A gorgeous new clothbound edition of Soseki's cherished novel, with an introduction by Murakami 'Even bigger than Japan is the inside of your head. Don't ever surrender yourself - not to Japan, not to anything' Soseki's work of gentle humour and doomed innocence depicts twenty-three-year-old Sanshiro, a recent graduate from a provincial college, as he begins university life in the...

A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of late-Meiji Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families' consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sosuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to...

Enjoy a BRIEF ENCOUNTER with Natsume Soseki, Japan's greatest modern novelist, in this sly, comic tale of cats, humans, and the absurdities of friendship. From Japan's most famous, classic novelist comes a remarkable gem of wit, irony, and feline observation. A stray kitten, catapulted to literary fame, loudly observes the world of Meiji Japan in all its absurdity. But he's...

In this melancholy and delicately written Japanese classic, a student befriends a reclusive elder at a beach resort, who he calls Sensei. As the two grow closer, Sensei remains unwilling to share the inner pain that has consumed his life and the shameful secret behind his monthly pilgrimages to a Tokyo cemetery. But when the student writes to Sensei after...