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  • The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai book cover
  • The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai book cover
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The Beggar Student

by Osamu Dazai

A writer steps into an unexpected role

$13.36 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

A writer steps into an unexpected role

A fictionalized Osamu Dazai begins in a state of professional embarrassment, then encounters a high-school dropout in a Tokyo park. Their intellectual argument leads to an unusual arrangement: Dazai is to narrate a film screening in the boy’s place that evening. The novella brings together literary self-consciousness, a meeting across generations, and a performance before an audience. Its description also points to destitution and intellectual rivalry as recurring concerns, while connecting the work to themes associated with Dazai’s No Longer Human.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in fictionalized portraits of writers and literary self-reference.
  • Those drawn to Japanese fiction centered on intellectual exchanges and an unconventional performance.
  • Readers familiar with Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human may appreciate the stated thematic connection.

Themes

Literary self-consciousnessDestitutionIntellectual rivalryPerformanceIntergenerational encounter

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

A fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher an awful manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Wandering along a river in a nearby park in suburban Tokyo, he meets a high-school dropout and the two get into an intellectual spat. Eventually, Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in the boy's place 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 glimmerings of truth in intellectual one-upmanship. Replete with settings straight out of the popular anime Bungo Stray Dogs and echoes of the themes in No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.

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