Natsume Soseki

Literally meaning 'Pillow of Grass', Kusamakura is Soseki's portrayal of an artist who opposes convention and logic, and shuns emotional involvement. Soseki's artist attempts to live as a hermit using other people as his stimuli for his sensations and reflections. The artist fluently and prolifically composes poetry, but finds himself unable to paint - despite befriending a beautiful young divorcee. He remains emotionally distanced from her for a long time and it is only one day when he sees compassion in her eyes that he finds himself able to paint her, but also reconnected with the emotional undercurrents he had hitherto tried to avoid, thereby ending his retreat from the world. Siseko's beautiful and haikuesque novel is infused with his own musings on art and nature, and helped to establish the novel as a major literary form in Japan.

"The subject of 'Kokoro,' which can be translated as 'the heart of things' or as 'feeling,' is the delicate matter of the contrast between the meanings the various parties of a relationship attach to it. In the course of this exploration, Soseki brilliantly describes different levels of friendship, family relationships, and the devices by which men attempt to escape from their fundamental loneliness. The novel sustains throughout its length something approaching poetry, and it is rich in understanding and insight. The translation, by Edwin McClellan, is extremely good." Â Anthony West, The New Yorker

The Three Cornered World is the novelistic expression of the contrast between the Western ethical view of reality and the Eastern ethical view by one of Japan's most beloved authors. Natsume Soseki tells of an artist who retreats to a country resort and becomes involved in a series of mysterious encounters with the owner's daughter. Intricately interwoven with the author's reflections on art and nature, conversations with Zen monks and writers of haiku, are a plethora of unique Japanese characters offering the reader an exquisite "word painting."