The setting sun - The Library of the Uncommons

No cover — Osamu Dazai: The setting sun (1981, Tuttle)

English language

Published March 10, 1981 by Tuttle.

ISBN:: 978-4-8053-0474-7

(1 review)

This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956. Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effectives of war and the translation from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazzi died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book had made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.

5 editions

Utsob Roy reviewed The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

Review of 'The Setting Sun' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Until you finish it, you'll never notice how well-crafted this novel is. That is how good art or literature should be. It will hide the craftsmanship. The narrative was concise, flowing, and captivating.

Another thing not strictly about this book is, I envy authors who (though being a man) can portray women such a way that it compels you to think that they know women from the depth of their psychology. I know they don't know everything about women. However, they can create a character which may not be like 'This is how women are' but will be like 'this is also how a woman can be'. Dazai can do this very well.