Kokoro cover art

Kokoro

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Kokoro

By: Natsume Soseki, Meredith McKinney - translator, Meredith McKinney - introduction, Meredith McKinney
Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe, Elizabeth Jasicki
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About this listen

“Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature.”—Haruki Murakami

The father of modern Japanese literature's best-loved novel, in its first new English translation in half a century


No collection of Japanese literature is complete without Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, his most famous novel and the last he completed before his death. Published here in the first new translation in more than fifty years, Kokoro—meaning "heart"—is the story of a subtle and poignant friendship between two unnamed characters, a young man and an enigmatic elder whom he calls "Sensei." Haunted by tragic secrets that have cast a long shadow over his life, Sensei slowly opens up to his young disciple, confessing indiscretions from his own student days that have left him reeling with guilt, and revealing, in the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between his moral anguish and his student's struggle to understand it, the profound cultural shift from one generation to the next that characterized Japan in the early twentieth century.
Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature

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Critic reviews

"This elegant novel...suffuses the reader with a sense of old Japan." —Los Angeles Times

"Soseki is the representative modern Japanese novelist, a figure of truly national stature." —Haruki Murakami
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It is an interesting novel full of melancholy and simple but powerful writing. Unfortunately, the narrator was kind of weak as a performer and didn’t manage to draw me into the story. It is a shame.

Nice book , Weak Narration

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love this author and narrator wonderful book wonderfully read a story of love lose and regrets

great writing

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I dont have much to say its just a very good book im writing to fill the word limit to leave a rating and dont want to spoil anything

My 2nd favourite book ever

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