Light and Dark - sôseki natsume

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Résumé :
Originally published in Japanese with the romanized title of Meian.

Biographie:
Natsume Soseki (1867--1916) was the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji period, known for his books Kokoro, Botchan, and I Am a Cat. He is also the author of Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings. John Nathan is Takashima Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Sommaire:
IntroductionA Note on the TranslationLight and Dark

This is Soseki's longest and most complex work, his most ambitious in terms of social description and psychological analysis, and his most intricately plotted. It is a book for the ages, a modernist masterpiece, masterfully translated. -- Alan Tansman, University of California, Berkeley With its dramatic expansion of the use of stream-of-consciousness narration that Soseki had already experimented with in previous novels, Light and Dark is a landmark in world literature. This new rendering by one of the very best translators of Japanese fiction reintroduces this modern masterpiece to a twenty-first century audience. -- Michael K. Bourdaghs, University of Chicago Light and Dark is the greatest novel by modern Japan's greatest novelist. What Soseki achieved in this, his last work, is a pure miracle: no other word can do justice to the irony and precision of his character delineations and the gripping reality of his portrayal of a Japan in transition. Thanks to John Nathan's fine new translation, literature lovers everywhere can finally share in savoring this treasure, a detailed and unforgiving limning of love and marriage, faith and betrayal. -- Minae Mizumura, author of A True Novel, The Fall of Language in the Age of English, and Zoku Meian (Light and dark, continued) Soseki's Light and Dark is one of the most gripping novels in modern Japanese literature. It represents a historical turning point in the development of Japanese fiction. John Nathan, a distinguished translator, has produced a masterful translation that captures the subtle nuances of the original. -- Haruo Shirane, Columbia University, author of Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons