No Longer Human

By Osamu Dazai

Book Overview

Revised

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811204812
• ISBN13: 9780811204811
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 177 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful work by Dazai himself.

I’m a lover of Dazai’s writing and NLH is probably his most famous. It’s not obscene or even horrifying, but it’s real. It depicts a man, Yozo, and his inner turmoils. This book is a staple in my library, and after all this time since it was first published, it can still be resonated with now.

Great Book!

Though I say this is a great book, I feel it is not for the more faint of heart, for lack of a better term. It's not a thriller or suspense in the way you would normally think of. Its more... If i had to come up with a term, a tragedy. You don't know how it will end but as you go on you get a sinking feeling it won't end well. Great for those with a love of psychology/philosophy and the macabre.

Interesting

A little absurd. It makes you ponder the selfishness of the character but in the end very inspiring. All things pass.

Amazing

Won’t spoil it

Not engaging

It had a couple interesting anecdotes and relatable ideas about life and people, but it wasn’t really anything groundbreaking. Overall, I don’t think the story was intriguing and the characters felt flat.

An Unsettling Beauty

This book is wonderful, it encapsulates the experience of a man who whilst being an absolute POS somehow also shows that whilst he pities himself, the author of the book most clearly does not. I read this book in a very interesting transition in my life as I was making the change from High School to Adult life, and it changed my mind on who I was and who I should be. That’s not to say that I became better, simply more proactive. This is a book that is certainly not for those looking to change their lives, but for those who stumbled upon it and felt a relation to its title and just as this book changed me I hope that it helps another soul lost in a transition.

My thoughts

I don't really write many reviews.... Obviously, since I don't have the best grammar nor do I know how to write a good review, but this book was just amazing. I've read it before but never got to buy it. I'm so glad I got this book, 10/10.

addictive

i first looked into an anime called sayonara zetsubou sensei and the first episode included an excerpt from this novel. so i decided to read it and i really enjoyed it

Topically (and otherwise?) funny

I tutor a Japanese woman once and week and I recently asked her for advice on selecting Japanese authors (partly for the reason mentioned recently in The Atlantic Monthly's book review section: American literature normally finds itself caught in a breeze of cultural shallowness). "Osamu Dazai is good," she responded, "but I think he maybe too depressing."My student, understandably, reads the book in a very different context than I do. She follows Yozo, the main character, through his trials and tribulations with a sense of impending dread - one that is brought to fruition with a storyline meant to explore the emotional and personal impact of the post-war period. While the American reader can glean the same reading, "No Longer Human" is also appealing in its quality of universality as applied to the common man. Yozo stumbles around his life bemoaning the world around him and his inability to operate in it, and the effect is often humorous and insightful. True, he is a tragic character, but one imbued with a sharp eye and a sharper wit. "No Longer Human" is filled with observations that I laughed at because of their appropriateness in my life, which upon casual comparison, shouldn't be similar at all."You thought it was funny? How? It's so sad!" my student all but yelled at me."Well, it's funny because it's so...correct. It's a great book because it deals with something so simple, and it deals with it well."

A timeless classic of world literature

No Longer Human is regarded as a work of autobiographical fiction that reflects the struggle for the Japanese people to adjust to post World War II realities. Well, I'm not so sure about that. As Donald Keene states in the introduction, it is probably a mistake to do so. The events are clearly based upon his life experiences, but the story is too well crafted to be a mere recounting of the years when his life was surrendered to drugs and alcohol. And what relation does the book have to the post-war years, aside from the fact that this is when it was published? Whatever the case, No Longer Human is a fabulous book, a true work of World Literature. For all of us who appreciate literature, we are all very unfortunate that Dazai took his life at a relatively young age and before his best works were created. Suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness.

Very powerful book

This is one of the most powerful book I have ever read. This novel (inspired by Dazai's autobiography and written in the first person) tells the story of one person who feels since childhood utterly alien from his fellow human beings but learn to put a face to hide his deep sense of alienation and his despise for the hypocrisy of society. He feels incapable to belong to a human society (hence the title). Follows a descent into alcohol, drugs, suicide as the main character enters into aldulthood. The story did remind me a little of Camus' The stranger (l'etranger) in so far as both are a tale of a person alienated from the society at large. But Dazai also explore the sense of self-loathing and self-destruction and is therefore much darker (Camus sounds cheerful in comparison). Dazai is known as a dark post-war writer and indeed this is a dark novel.