{"title":"New Directions","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"no-longer-human-by-osamu-dazai","title":"No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai","description":"The poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas.\n\nPortraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's \u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eNo Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a \"clown\" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.\n\n\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eNo Longer Human has been adapted as a graphic novel by horror manga artist Junji Ito, made into an anime film, \u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eHuman Lost,directed by Fuminori Kizaki and is the name of an ability in the manga series Bungo Stray Dogs used by a character named after Dazai.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49977030672697,"sku":"11840819","price":75.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11840819.jpg?v=1727322628"},{"product_id":"self-portraits-by-osamu-dazai","title":"Self Portraits by Osamu Dazai","description":"Bringing together novelist Osamu Dazai's best autobiographical shorts in a single, slim volume, Self-Portraits shows the legendary writer at his best―and his worst.\n\n\"Art dies the moment it acquires authority.\" So said Japan's quintessential rebel writer Osamu Dazai, who, disgusted with the hypocrisy of every kind of establishment, from the nation's obsolete aristocracy to its posturing, warmongering generals, went his own way, even when that meant his death―and the death of others. Faced with pressure to conform, he declared his individuality to the world―in all its self-involved, self-conscious and self-hating glory. \"Art\", he wrote, \"is 'I'.\"\n\nIn these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai's life mirrored his art and vice versa, as the writer\/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing. And that has made him a hero to generations of readers who see laid bare, in his works, the painful, impossible contradictions inherent in the universal commandment of social life―\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003efit in and do as you are told―as well as the possibility, however desperate, of defiance.\n\nLong out of print, these stories will be a revelation to the legions of new fans of \u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eNo Longer Human, \u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Setting Sun and \u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eThe Flowers of Buffoonery.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49977037783353,"sku":"11840917","price":89.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11840917.jpg?v=1727322938"},{"product_id":"the-samurai-by-shusaku-endo","title":"The Samurai by Shusaku Endo","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Samurai, without doubt one of the late Shusaku Endo's finest works, seamlessly combines historical fact with novelist's imaginings. Set in the period preceding the Christian persecutions in Japan, The Samurai traces the steps of some of the first Japanese to set foot on European soil. Rokuemon Hasekura, a low-ranking warrior, is chosen as one of Japan's envoys to the Viceroy of Mexico and Pope Paul V. The emissaries set sail in 1613, accompanied by an ambitious Franciscan missionary who hopes to bargain trading privileges with the West for the right to head his order in Japan. The arduous journey lasts four years, and the Japanese travel from Mexico to Rome, where they are persuaded that the success of their mission depends on their conversion willy-nilly to Christianity. In fact, the enterprise has been futile from the start and the mission returns to Japan where the political tides have shifted: the authorities are pursuing an isolationist policy and a ruthless stamping out of all Western influences. In the face of disillusionment and death, samurai Rokuemon's only support and solace come from the spiritual lord he is not even sure he believes in.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50227820200249,"sku":"11843568","price":79.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11843568.webp?v=1733495975"},{"product_id":"the-beggar-student-by-osamu-dazai-author-sam-bett-translator","title":"The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai (Author), Sam Bett (Translator)","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just sent his publisher a terrible manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Shortly afterward, while moping around a park in suburban Tokyo, he spots someone drowning in a nearby aqueduct. He doesn’t want to become a witness to a suicide and eventually decides to flee the park. But as he is leaving, he trips over the boy who had been drowning, and the two begin an unlikely conversation that turns into an intellectual spat. Hoping to ingratiate himself with the boy—a high-school dropout—Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in the boy’s stead that very night as the live narrator of a film screening... So begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where there is glamor in destitution, and intellectual one-upmanship reveals glimmers of truth. Replete with settings incorporated into the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and with echoes of No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50227820429625,"sku":"11843573","price":95.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11843573.jpg?v=1733495988"},{"product_id":"no-one-knows-by-osamu-dazai","title":"No One Knows by Osamu Dazai","description":"\u003cp\u003eNo one really understands how we suffer. One day, when we’re adults, we may come to recall this suffering, this misery, as silly and laughable, but how are we to get through the long, hateful period until then? No one bothers to teach us that. Osamu Dazai was a master raconteur who plumbed—in an addictive, easy style—the absurd complexities of life in a society whose expectations cannot be met without sacrificing one's individual ideals on the altar of conformity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe gravitational pull of his prose is on full display in these stories. In “Lantern,” a young woman, in love with a well-born but impoverished student, shoplifts a bathing suit for him—and ends up in the local newspaper indicted as a crazed, degenerate communist. In “Chiyojo,” a high-school girl shows early promise as a writer, but as her uncle and mother relentlessly push her to pursue a literary career, she must ask herself: is this what I really want? Or am I supposed to fulfill their own frustrated ambitions? In “Shame,” a young reader writes a fan letter to a writer she admires, only to find out, upon visiting him, that he’s a bourgeoise sophisticate nothing like the desperate rebels he portrays, and decides (in true Dazai style): “Novelists are human trash.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNo, they’re worse than that; they’re demons. . .\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThey write nothing but lies.” This collection of 14 tales—a half-dozen of which have never before appeared in English—is based on a Japanese collection of, as Dazai described them, “soliloquies by female narrators.” No One Knows includes the quietly brilliant long story “Schoolgirl” and shows the fiction of this 20th-century genius in a fresh light.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eArticle No: LB-9780811239332\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50756549378361,"sku":"11847063","price":95.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11847063.jpg?v=1747890552"},{"product_id":"the-factory-by-hiroko-oyamada","title":"The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada","description":"Author: Hiroko Oyamada\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9780811228855\u003cbr\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe English-language debut of one of Japan's most exciting new writers, The Factory follows three workers at a sprawling industrial factory. Each worker focuses intently on the specific task they've been assigned: one shreds paper, one proofreads documents, and another studies the moss growing all over the expansive grounds. But their lives slowly become governed by their work-days take on a strange logic and momentum, and little by little, the margins of reality seem to be dissolving: Where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin? What's going on with the strange animals here? And after a while-it could be weeks or years-the three workers struggle to answer the most basic question: What am I doing here? With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, The Factory casts a vivid-and sometimes surreal-portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of the modern workplace.","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51331265298745,"sku":"11851761","price":69.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11851761.jpg?v=1762750602"},{"product_id":"the-flowers-of-buffoonery-by-osamu-dazai","title":"The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai","description":"Author: Osamu Dazai\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9780811234542\u003cbr\u003eFormat: Paperback\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: New Directions\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanatorium where Yozo Oba-the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age-is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a light-hearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes and trying to make each other laugh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile No Longer Human delves into the darkest corners of human consciousness, The Flowers of Buffoonery pokes fun at these same emotions: the follies and hardships of youth, of love and of self-hatred and depression. A glimpse into the lives of a group of outsiders in pre-war Japan, The Flowers of Buffoonery is a darkly humorous and fresh addition to Osamu Dazai's masterful and intoxicating oeuvre.","brand":"Lit Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53639856390457,"sku":"11857356","price":79.9,"currency_code":"MYR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0822\/6871\/7369\/files\/11857356.jpg?v=1782627792"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.cziplee.com\/collections\/new-directions.oembed","provider":"CzipLee Retail","version":"1.0","type":"link"}