Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Paperback)

by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Author), Charles DeWolf (Translator)

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Product Details

Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: Archipelago Books (May 1 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0977857603
ISBN-13: 978-0977857609
Product Dimensions: 18.5 x 14.7 x 2.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 318 g
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Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #330,630 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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From Publishers Weekly

There's a lot more to Akutagawa (1892-1927) than his short story "Rashomon," made famous by the Kirosawa film, and not among these 13 tales, delicately balanced worlds in miniature. Newly translated, they evoke the lost splendor and conflicts of Rashomon's Meiji Era. "The Garden" depicts a crumbling inn belonging to the once-great family Nakamura; presciently, the last surviving relative, Ren'ichi, has abandoned the land to attend art school in Tokyo. Titled after a line from Basho, "O'er a Withered Moor" re-creates, in an quiet Osaka residence, the mournful last moments of a great man's life, surrounded by his grieving, anxious disciples. The exquisite "Kesa and Morito" is made up of soliloquies by two lovers who contemplate murdering Kesa's husband in order to consummate their conflicted longing for each other. Modern tales include the vignette "Mandarins," the account of a ennui-laden train traveler who looks on in delighted astonishment as his young peasant co-passenger throws oranges to her brothers, waving as they pass. Akutagawa's stories are gorgeous and intimate.
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"Extravagance and horror are in his work but never in his style, which is always crystal clear."-Jorge Luis Borges

"In [Akutagawa's] spare, textured prose . . . he brings us clear-eyed glimpses of human behavior."-The New York Times Book Review

In Mandarins, Ryunosuke Akutagawa blends a sense of sad inevitability with -subtle irony. Reflective and often humorous, these tales reveal an enormous amount about Japanese culture, while the inner struggles of the characters always strike the universal.

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