Gensen Volume 1: Selected Stories in Modern Japanese Literature by Various Authors EPUB

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Gensen Volume 1: Selected Stories in Modern Japanese Literature by Various Authors EPUB

If someone asked you about Japanese literature, the best-selling author Haruki Murakami would likely come to mind, and more experienced readers might be familiar with other great Japanese authors like Sayaka Murata, Yoko Ogawa, Osamu Dazai, or Junichiro Tanizaki. But with only an extremely small percentage of Japanese literature translated into English, these authors are just the tip of the iceberg of what Japan has to offer.

“Gensen: Selected Stories in Modern Japanese Literature: Volume 1” is the first volume in a series that aims to showcase a variety of unique, creative, and thought-provoking Japanese authors, including those you may have heard of, as well as hidden gems which have rarely, if ever, been translated to English before.

This volume contains fiction pieces by Juza Unno (the founding father of Japanese science fiction), Kyusaku Yumeno (known for his dark, unusual style and author of Dogra Magra), and Yoshio Toyoshima (contemporary and close friend of Osamu Dazai), among others.

A man struggles to train his daughter as a master violinist, despite the protests of society; a boy stumbles upon a magic sprite in the forest in his quest to make his dreams come true; a scientist invents a ground-breaking device, only to discover a horrifying side-effect…These stories will lead you off the beaten path of Japanese literature and into unexpected places within its diverse landscape.

A mini-biography accompanies each piece to give an idea who the author was and when he or she was active. For those learning Japanese, the second half of the book contains the same stories in parallel English / Japanese format. In terms of difficulty, the stories in this volume can be considered as being from easy to moderate, with two fairy tales included.

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