A Shameful Life

Osamu Dazai is one of the giants of 20th-century Japanese literature. He became even more of a cult-like figure when he committed suicide with his supposed lover in 1948. What we get is his last, and most autobiographical, work. One in which you ask yourself whether you are really reading a piece of fiction or something that the author wanted the world to know before he committed suicide. A Shameful Life is split into three journals written by a young man who despairs at life, who despairs at living, and who is frankly tired of being around people because he does not know how to act around them. The further we go along in the book, the worst the protagonist acts toward the one friend he has and the multiple lovers he takes, but he has no clue how to act like a normal human.

There have been many translations of this short novel throughout the decades, but this is an easily readable edition that helps put it back into the hands of people.