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(★)(Titulo original : それから[Sorekara]／ Translated from the Japanese with an Afterword and Selected Bibliography by Norma Moore Field／ This translation by Norma Moore Field introduces English-language readers to one of the memorable novels of Natsume Sooseki, the Meiji-era novelist whose works have been best sellers in Japan for more than half a century.／ ´And Then´ takes place in the years following Japan´s impressive victory over Russia in the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese War. Having attained the status of a modern world power to be reckoned with, Japan is bursting with pride and ambition. But the rapid pace of modernization has taken its toll in human psychological terms, leaving many of the nation´s newly matured adults to steer an uncharted course between traditional social values and the principle of rapid change virtually for its own sake.／ One such young man is Daisuke, the thirty-year-old protagonist of ´And Then´, who exhibits all the symptoms of what psychologists would later call alienation. Disaffected by the materialist society around him, and unable to relate to his family, whose traditional values he sees as hypocritical, he has taken refuge in idleness and passivity. The only self-assertive action he can manage to take, declaring his love for a woman married to another man, is also a self-destructive one.／ Present-day readers will have no trouble identifying with Daisuke´s anomie. This engaging translation, and the accompanying essay by the translator, make the world of a young Meiji intellectual --and that of Natsume Sooseki himself-- come alive for an international readership.／ ◆Norma Moore Field holds an M.A. degree in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Indiana University and is continuing her studies at Princeton University´s Department of Asian Studies.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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