This is an English translation of the book in Japanese, published as the volume 20 in the series of Seminar Notes from The University of Tokyo that grew out of a course of lectures by Professor Kunihiko Kodaira in 1967. It serves as an almost self-contained introduction to the theory of complex algebraic surfaces, including concise proofs of Gorenstein's theorem for curves on a surface and Noether's formula for the arithmetic genus. It also discusses the behavior of the pluri-canonical maps of surfaces of general type as a practical application of the general theory. The book is aimed at graduate students and also at anyone interested in algebraic surfaces, and readers are expected to have only a basic knowledge of complex manifolds as a prerequisite.

Inhalt
Foreword.- Preface.- Introduction (Purposes and Known Results).- Chapter: 1 Fundamentals of Algebraic Surfaces.- Chapter 2: Pluri-canonical Systems on Algebraic Surfaces of General.- Bibliography.