Böcker av Ryunosuke Akutagawa

'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.'Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling.Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories is also available in Penguin Classics.

Ry nosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan s foremost stylists - a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. Rash mon and In a Bamboo Grove inspired Kurosawa s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as The Nose , O-Gin and Loyalty paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as Death Register , The Life of a Stupid Man and Spinning Gears , Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.

"e;Clear-eyed glimpses of human behavior in the extremities of poverty, stupidity, greed, vanity Story-telling of an unconventional sort, with most of the substance beneath the shining, enameled surface."e; The New York Times Book Review Widely acknowledged as "e;the father of the Japanese short story,"e; Ryunosuke Akutagawa remains one of the most influential Japanese writers of all time. Rashomon and Other Stories, a collection of his most celebrated work, resonates as strongly today as when it first published a century ago. This volume includes: In a Grove: An iconic, contradictory tale of the murder of a samurai in a forest near Kyoto told through three varying accounts Rashomon: A masterless samurai contemplates following a life of crime as he encounters an old woman at the old Rashomon gate outside Kyoto Yam Gruel: A low-ranking court official laments his position all the while yearning for his favorite, yet humble, dish The Martyr: Set in Japan's Christian missionary era, a young boy is excommunicated for fathering an illegitimate child, but not all is as it seems Kesa and Morito: An adulterous couple plots to kill the woman's husband as the situation threatens to spin out of control The Dragon: A priest concocts a prank involving a dragon, but the tall tale begins to take on a life of its own With a new foreward by noted Akutagawa scholar Seiji Lippit, this updated version of a classic collection is a an excellent, readable introduction to Japanese literature.

A famous samurai murder mystery finally brought to life in graphic novel form! A sword-swinging samurai, a corpse-robbing crone and a falsely accused trans man stand at the center of these four iconic tales, once the inspiration for a classic film, now turned into stunning graphic novellas. The stories in this volume by Ryunosuke Akutagawa -- the renowned "father of the Japanese short story" are captured by manga masters mkdeville and Philippe Nicloux in these four action-packed adaptations: Rashomon: A houseless servant pits morality against survival in a post-apocalyptic world where thievery and the desecration of the dead are necessary for survivalIn a Grove: Conflicting statements and competing narratives call into question the notion of objective truth in a searing tale of rape and revengeOtomi's Virginity: Pride, honor and dignity are at stake when a young servant is confronted by an unexpected aggressor at her employer's abandoned houseThe Martyr: A pious Jesuit with a dark secret faces excommunication and death in 16th-century Japan, when Christianity was introduced and then banned by order of the Shogun>**Recommended for readers ages 16+ due to mature themes and graphic content**

The Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary toddlers to their deaths in rivers: a scaly, child-sized creature, looking something like a frog, but with a sharp, pointed beak and an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, which hardens with age.Akutagawa's Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic asylum: he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa. He decides to chase it and, like Alice pursuing the White Rabbit, he tumbles down a hole, out of the human world and into the realm of the Kappas. There he is well looked after, in fact almost made a pet of: as a human, he is a novelty. He makes friends and spends his time learning about their world, exploring the seemingly ridiculous ways of the Kappa, but noting many-not always flattering-parallels to Japanese mores regarding morality, legal justice, economics, and sex. Alas, when the patient eventually returns to the human world, he becomes disgusted by humanity and, like Gulliver missing the Houyhnhnms, he begins to pine for his old friends the Kappas, rather as if he has been forced to take leave of Toad of Toad Hall...

Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ryunosuke Akutagawa created disturbing stories out of Japan's cultural upheaval. Akutagawa's disturbing tale of seven people recounts the same incident from shockingly different perspectives.Rashomon tells the chilling story of the killing of a samurai through the testimony of witnesses, including the spirit of the murdered man. The fable-like Yam Gruel is an account of desire and humiliation, but one in which the reader's sympathy is thoroughly unsettled. And in The Martyr, a beloved orphan raised by Jesuit priests is exiled when he refuses to admit that he made a local girl pregnant. He regains their love and respect only at the price of his life. All six tales in the collection show Akutagawa as a master storyteller and an exciting voice of modern Japanese literature.

Deftly translated by Ryan Choi, these stories and vignettes (plus two short plays) all have radical brevity in common, demonstrating that Akutagawa was an early and prescient master of what we now call "flash" fiction and non-fiction. With a striking economy of means, the author gives us vivid, eccentric, feeling characters, young and elderly, learned and unpolished, urban and rural. Akutagawa's observations and notes â€" on dreams, on being impersonated, on mountain towns, winter nights, university life and, poignantly, the Great Kantō Earthquake â€" are as rich and evocative as his stories, with which they share a mesmerising quality.  First published in Japan between 1914 and 1927 (some posthumously), these works have been overlooked in favour of Akutagawa's longer tales, which have formed the basis of his reputation in the West. In translating them, Choi rounds out our understanding of this master stylist.Â

10 Selected Short Stories by Akutagawa RyunosukeLarge Print with Japanese languageGood for Japanese Learners & Fans !

This fascinating collection gave birth to a new paradigm when Akira Kurosawa made famous Akutagawa's disturbing tale of seven people recounting the same incident from shockingly different perspectives.