'He had the Ten Kings of Hell and their minions over in one small corner, and everything else - the entire screen - was enveloped in a firestorm so terrible you thought the swirling flames were going to melt the mountain of Sabres and the Forest of Swords.' One of the towering figures of modern Japanese writing, Akutagawa's early career was distinguished by imaginative, beautifully crafted stories of medieval Japan, rich with period detail. These two stories include his great masterpiece of that period, "Hell Screen", and the parable of a thread-thin chance of escape for a sinner in the "Pool of Blood". This book includes "Hell Screen" and "The Spider Thread".

Hell Screen

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Literature & Fiction

Penguin Classics/Press

Introducing Little Clothbound irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.\nCelebrating the range and diversity of Penguin Classics, they take us from snowy Japan to springtime Vienna, from haunted New England to a sun-drenched Mediterranean island, and from a game of chess on the ocean to a love story on the moon. Beautifully designed and printed, these collectible editions are bound in colourful, tactile cloth and stamped with foil.\nAkutagawa was one of the towering figures of modern Japanese literature, and is considered the father of the Japanese short story. This paradigmatic selection, which includes the stories that inspired Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, showcases the terrible beauty, cynicism, sublime pain and absurd humour of his writing.\n'One never tires of reading and re-reading his best works. The elegantly spare style has a truly spine-tingling brilliance' - Haruki Murakami

Hell Screen (Little Clothbound Classics)

Genre Fiction

Penguin Classics

Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ryunosuke Akutagawa created disturbing stories out of Japan's cultural upheaval. Rashomon tells the chilling story of the killing of a samurai through the testimony of witnesses, including the spirit of the murdered man. The fable-like Yam Gruel is an account of desire and humiliation, but one in which the reader's sympathy is thoroughly unsettled. And in The Martyr, a beloved orphan raised by Jesuit priests is exiled when he refuses to admit that he made a local girl pregnant. He regains their love and respect only at the price of his life. All six tales in the collection show Akutagawa as a master storyteller and an exciting voice of modern Japanese literature.

Rashomon and Other Stories

Contemporary

Liveright

From the literary giant of Japan, who is often referred to as the "Godfather of the Japanese short story," and after whom the most coveted literary prize in Japan is named, the Ajutagawa Prize, comes this collection of three of his greatest short stories. Akutagawa is probably best know for his sotry "Rashomon" which was adapted for the screen by legendary filmmarker Akira Kurosawa. While he died at the young age of 35, the author penned will over 150 short stories, including "Cogwheels" which he wrote just before his suicide in 1927. Accompanied by stunning woodcuts by renowned artists Naoko Matsubara, and expertly translated by Howard Norman, the three stories compiled here reflect the haunting, precise and brilliant style of Akutagawa and offer a superb entry point of his work. Haruki Murakami aptly described Akutagawa's writing when he remarked, "the flow of his language is the best feature of Akutagawa's style. Never stagnant, it moves along like a living thing...His choice of words is intuitive, natural-and beautiful."

Cogwheels and Other Stories

Literary

Mosaic Press

Prefiguring the vital modernist voices of the Western literary canon, Akutagawa writes with a trenchant psychological precision that exposes the shifting traditions and ironies of early twentieth-century Japan and reveals his own strained connection to it. These stories are moving glimpses into a cast of characters at odds with the society around them, singular portraits that soar effortlessly toward the universal. "What good is intelligence if you cannot discover a useful melancholy?" Akutagawa once mused. Both piercing intelligence and "useful melancholy" buoy this remarkable collection. Mandarins contains three stories published in English for the first time: "An Evening Conversation," "An Enlightened Husband," and "Winter."

Mandarins: Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Religion & Spirituality

Archipelago Books

Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories

Paw Prints

The stories of Akutagawa - like those of his peer and contemporary Franz Kafka - are intricate explorations of peculiar junctures of modern cosmopolitan subjectivity. Yet Kafka, though clearly positioned on the borders of dominant Western culture, still writes from within it. Akutagawa's singular difference lies in a set of confrontations that can be said to be truly alien. Eastern and Western, Ancient and Modern, Masculine and Feminine collapse in his extraordinarily innovative and lucid prose.

Essential Akutagawa: Rashomon, Hell Screen, Cogwheels, a Fool's Life and Other Short Fiction

Marsilio Pub

Inscribed Red: Haiku Versions After Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

Hoffman, Eric

Poetry

Spuyten Duyvil Publishing

(Fairy tale masterpiece selections of Japanese) Dolly (1993) ISBN: 4039636104 [Japanese Import]

KAISEISHA

Yarn / Jigokuhen of spider (Kadokawa Bunko green 33-3) (1968) ISBN: 4041033039 [Japanese Import]

Kadokawa Shoten

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Books by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa