Schoolgirl
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who love Dazai's work and want his short stories in female voices
- Literary readers interested in modern Japanese short fiction and psychological portraiture
- Writers and readers attentive to first-person narrative technique
- General readers who want to feel the shifts of life's stages through short stories
Not a good fit for
- Readers expecting plot-driven, fast-paced popular fiction
- Readers sensitive to a gloomy, introspective tone and prone to emotional strain
- Readers looking only for autobiographical monologue in the manner of No Longer Human
Reading tips
- Read in the editor's order and note how the narrator's age and tone shift.
- Pause after each story, recall what mattered most to the narrator, then move on.
- Read alongside other Dazai works and compare the female first person with the male confessional voice.
- Mark passages that unsettle or confuse you and revisit them after finishing, without rushing to judge.
About the publisher
Tianjin People's Publishing House publishes across such fields as classic works, foreign literature, architecture, social culture and social sciences, with 749 relevant titles in the collection. In the areas of classics and scholarship, works such as Wang Guowei's Renjian Cihua and Fei Xiaotong's From the Soil and Fertility and Reproduction reflect a sustained attention to social culture and classic texts of thought. Architectural books are represented by Liang Sicheng's Annotated Yingzao Fashi and A History of Chinese Architecture, showing an emphasis on architectural heritage and building traditions. In foreign literature, translations of Sholokhov's And Quiet Flows the Don and Tolstoy's War and Peace and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, through the work of translators such as Li Gang and Yu Dawei, form a substantial series of translated works. Overall, the press combines classic texts, scholarly works and fine translations, with a publishing character oriented toward humanistic depth and the dissemination of knowledge.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 雪夜的故事
- 女生徒
- 等待
- 千代女
- 灯笼
- 蟋蟀
- 皮肤与心
- 发妻
- 好客的夫人
- 叶樱与魔哨
FAQ
I haven't read Dazai. Can I start with this book?
Are the stories connected? Should I read them in order?
Is this book stylistically the same as No Longer Human?
Comments
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About the author
Osamu Dazai (1909–1948) was a Japanese novelist born Tsushima Shūji into a wealthy landowning family in Aomori Prefecture. A leading figure of Japan's "Buraiha" or decadent school, he entered the literary world in the 1930s, and his early work The Setting Sun was shortlisted for the first Akutagawa Prize. In the postwar years he produced his most important writing, including The Setting Sun and No Longer Human, works marked by self-mocking confession and a gloomy, sentimental tone that portray outcasts, alienation, and self-destruction. His influence on later Japanese literature is profound. In 1948 he drowned himself with his lover, Yamazaki Tomie, at the age of 38. His fiction centers on self-exile, the disintegration of family, and the spiritual crisis of postwar Japan, and his decadent yet sincere style has earned him a wide readership in the Chinese-speaking world as well.
Lu Qiushi is an active translator in the Chinese-language book market; publicly available information is limited, and details such as nationality and dates of birth and death cannot be confirmed. Judging from the 24 works included in the database, his translation work centers on modern and contemporary Japanese literature. Representative translations include The Makioka Sisters, Thousand Cranes, and In Praise of Shadows, as well as collections such as the classic works of Yasunari Kawabata, the essential Kawabata set, and a Osamu Dazai trilogy; he has also worked on subjects such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Part Three: Zhuge Liang Emerges). His translations appear under categories including foreign literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, and social novels, as well as otherworldly fantasy. Overall, he focuses on translating classic Japanese authors, striving to preserve the linguistic texture and aesthetic qualities of the originals and offering Chinese readers relatively systematic versions of writers such as Kawabata and Dazai.
