What I despise about Dazai is that he exposes precisely those things in myself that I most want to hide.--Yukio Mishima

Dazai was an aristocratic tramp, a self-described delinquent, yet he wrote with the forbearance of a fasting scribe.--Patti Smith

This beguiling novella from Dazai (1909-1948) revisits the protagonist from the author's No Longer Human at a younger age...Dazai brings wit and pathos to the chronicle of Yozo's four days at the sanatorium, as Yozo's jocular banter with an art school classmate, a younger cousin, and a nurse belie a deep despair. In a few artful strokes, Dazai has sketched a memorable character.-- "Publishers Weekly"

Dazai's usual concerns in a lighter, more comic key, ... captures the sweetness under the pretended bravado of these baffled youth.--Andrew Martin "The New York Times"

For the first time in English, readers will be able to experience the early days of Japanese fiction's beloved bad boy.-- "The Japan Times"

For all his novels' reputation as sketches of alienation, they're equally potent as modern portraits of human connection.--Jane Yong Kim "The Atlantic"

Outrageous, exasperating, and, like so much of Dazai's writing, indefinably (perhaps also indefensibly) charming.--Paul Franz "The Nation"

Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation

Pub date: 2023-03-07

Length: 96 pages