Light and dark

Published in 1917, "Light and Dark" is unlike any of Natsume Soseki's previous works and unique in Japanese fiction of the period. What distinguishes the novel as "modern" is its remarkable representation of interiority. The protagonists, Tsuda Yoshio, thirty, and his wife O-Nobu, twenty-three, exhibit a gratifying complexity that qualifies them as some of the earliest examples of three-dimensional characters in Japanese fiction. O-Nobu is quick-witted and cunning, a snob and narcissist no less than her husband, passionate, arrogant, spoiled, insecure, naive — yet, above all, gallant. Under Soseki's scrutiny, she emerges as a flesh-and-blood heroine with a palpable reality, dueling with her husband, his troublemaking friend, Kobayashi, and her sister-in-law, O-Hid?. Tsuda undertakes his own battles with Kobayashi, O-Hid? and the manipulative Madam Yoshikawa, his boss's wife. These exchanges explode into moments of intense jealousy, rancor, and recrimination that will surprise...

Author: Soseki Natsume
Year of publication: 2013
Translator: Nathan John
Genre: Classical prose
Number of pages: 486
Reading time: 8 h. 6 min.
Formats: FB2, EPUB, PDF
Language: english
Requests: read online, download without registration, e-book