'What is the life of a human being - a drop of dew, a flash of lightning? This is so sad, so sad.' Autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th-century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927). Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories is also available in Penguin Classics.

Autorentext
Ryunosuke Akutagawa was a short-story writer, poet and essayist, and one of the first Japanese modernists translated into English. He was born in Tokyo in 1892, and began writing for student publications at the age of ten. He graduated from Tokyo University with an English Literature degree and worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1919. His mother had suffered a mental breakdown shortly after his birth and he was plagued by fear of inherited insanity all his life. He killed himself in 1927.Jay Rubin is an American translator and academic. He is the translator of several of Haruki Murakami's major works, including Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Natsume Soseki's The Miner and Sanshiro and Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories. He is the author of Making Sense of Japanese, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words and a novel, The Sun Gods.

Zusammenfassung
Includes autobiographical stories from one of Japan's masters of modernist story-telling - Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927).