Book pages

# Books

## No Longer Human

"*A novella by Osamu Dazai featuring a guilt-ridden and self-conscious protagonist eventually led to ruin by his afflictions. A month after its completion, Dazai committed suicide, drowning himself in the Tarnagawa Aqueduct.*"

Readable pages include:

Page 9: "*Mine has been a life of such shame.*"

Page 100: "*Society? Don't you mean yourself?*"

Page 124: "*What's the antonym of crime?*"

Page 147: "*No longer human.*"

## Demian

"*A novel by Herman Hesse in which protagonist Emil Sinclair, motivated by his mysterious friend Max Demian and his mother, engages in self-discovery. This novel stems from from Hesse's introduction to the philosophy of Carl Jung.*"

Readable pages include:

Page 8: "*I have always been a seeker.*"

Page 57: "*Further torments and slavery.*"

Page 136: "*Struggling out of the egg.*"

Page 193: "*Only yourself, only your own fate.*"

## The Moon Over The Mountain

"*A novella by Atsushi Nakajima in which a failed poet, Li Zheng, comes to terms with his transformation into a cognizant tiger. Unlike the fable upon which it is based, the novella focuses on Zheng's internal distress at his transformation.*"

Readable pages include:

Page 8: "*This low rank chafed his pride.*"

Page 13: "*No one understands this feeling.*"

Page 16: "*My cowardly pride and haughty shame.*"

Page 18: "*I've degraded into such a beast.*"

## The Metamorphosis

*"A novella by Franz Kafka. Upon waking, Gregor Samsa finds himself metamorphosed into a dreadful insect, a "monstrous vermin." Kafka's three novels (The Missing Man, The Trial, The Castle) remain incomplete."*

Readable pages include:

Page 5: "*Transformed into a horrible vermin*."

Page 32: "*In a difficult situation.*"

Page 65: "*Lack of human communication.*"

Page 93: "*So thoughtless about the others.*"

## Strait is the Gate

"*A novel by André Gide featuring protagonist Jerome, whose love interest, Alissa, abandons all worldly joy before finding from this world, altogether. Gide uses this piece to comment on the idea of self-sacrifice.*"

Readable pages include:

Page 9: "*My sensibility-- over-stimulated.*"

Page 26: "*Enter ye in at the strait gate.*"

Page 108: "*To Him I offered my trouble.*"

Page 170: "*Holiness is an obligation.*"

## First Love

*"A novel by Ivan Turgenev. Even as he is strung along by the noble Zinaida who lives next door, the storyteller, Vladmir, falls in love. According to Turgenev, this story is almost auto-biographical in nature."*

Readable quotes include:

Page 5: "*The history of his first love.*"

Page 21: "*I thought nothing. How can I?*"

Page 47: "*Seize what thou canst thyself.*"

Page 75: "*I was still a child.*"

## Somokuto

"*A collection of haiku poetry by Santoka Taneda. Santoka composed free-verse haiku to more accurately portray his emotions. After failing in business, he drank heavily and cast off society, living as a beggar.*"

Readable pages include:

Page 17: "*The straight road, Loneliness*."

Page 22: "*Me-- Helpless and good for nothing.*"

Page 153: "*I search as I walk through the wind*."

Page 198: "*I feel withered by the loneliness.*"

## The Miner

"*A full-length novel by Natsume Soseki following a heartbroken 19 year old from a well-to-do family who runs away from home and is led to work in a coal mine. This novel is a somewhat faithful memoir of an actual miner's story*."

Readable pages include:

Page 11: "*I must go somewhere dark*."

Page 55: "*To live and die over and over*."

Page 109: "*As though I myself am not myself.*"

Page 194: "*Both defeated and triumphant*."

## The Myth of Sisyphus

*"In this essay written by Albert Camus, the attempt is made to introduce the author's philosophy of the absurd through the allegorical absurdity of Greek mythology and the story of Sisyphus. Camus made an effort to depict the world subjectively rather than objectively."*

Readable pages include:

Page 12: "*One philosophical problem, suicide.*"

Page 73: "*The absurd is sin without God.*"

Page 137: "*Hasten toward some hope.*"

Page 199: "*Hope cannot be eluded forever.*"

## Frankenstein

*"A novel by Mrs Mary Shelley. Cursed with loneliness, a man-made monster cobbled together of the parts of various corpses contemplates the meaning of its life. The original title of the novel was Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus."*

Readable pages include:

Page 24: "*I have no friend.*"

Page 67: "*Whence did life proceed?*"

Page 134: "*Misery made me a fiend.*"

Page 189: "*I am alone and miserable.*"

## Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

*"A children's book by Lewis Carroll in which a young girl named Alice follows a white rabbit and winds up lost in a fantastical world. The story was originally an improvised tale for a young girl of the author's acquaintance, one Alice Lidell."*

Readable pages include:

Page 13: "*Oh dear! I shall be late!*"

Page 31: "*Who am I then?*"

Page 89: "*I'm mad. You're mad.*"

Page 125: "*Take care of the sense.*"

## The Little Prince

*"In this novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, having crash-landed in the Sahara Desert, the narrator encounters a prince hailing from a certain tiny planet. The real-life plane crash the story references is discussed in more detail in Wind, Sand and Stars by the same author."*

Readable pages include:

Page 8: "*Grown-ups always need explanations.*"

Page 39: *"Somewhere, my flower is there.*"

Page 62: "*The grown-ups are very odd.*"

Page 108: "*What is essential is invisible.*"

## The Works of Edgar Allan Poe

*"A collection of the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe dedicated to works dabbling in illusion, such as the popular narrative poem, The Raven. Many of the poems found in The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire were heavily inspired by Poe's work."*

Readable pages include:

Page 15: "*Darkness there and nothing more.*"

Page 24: "*But a dream within a dream?*"

Page 57: "*The play is the tradegy, "Man."* "

Page 64: "*I dwelt alone, In a world of moan.*"

## Dogra Magra

*"Why, this novel is a fascinating work expressing the mystery that is a mentally ill state of mind. Those who are able to read this work from start to finish must surely question their sanity at least once."*

Readable pages include:

Page 3: "*O fetus, O fetus, Why do you squirm?*"

Page 87: "*Gong...gong...*"

Page 180: "*Beyond comprehension.*"

Page 496: "*Ichiro Kure is... me. I am...*"