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Kokoro [Heart]
- Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe, Elizabeth Jasicki
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
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Publisher's summary
The great Japanese author’s most famous 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 50 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 20th century.
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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A beautifully written book
- By just asking for some common sense on 03-19-19
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A Personal Matter
- By: Kenzaburo Oe, John Nathan - translator
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oe's most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times "close to a perfect novel". In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child?
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Should have been better
- By Erez on 07-24-12
By: Kenzaburo Oe, and others
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Kokoro
- By: Keith Yatsuhashi
- Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On the planet of Higo, without the guidance of the Great Spirits, its people are descending into religious civil war. Baiyren Tallaenaq, Prince of Higo, is exiled after causing the death of his mother. Freed from his responsibilities and the looming war, he steals their greatest weapon - a giant, sentient armoured suit - and uses it to open a portal to a world he never knew existed. A world called Earth...home of a magical young woman called Keiko.
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Meh
- By Kindle Customer on 06-29-22
By: Keith Yatsuhashi
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The Rainbow
- A Novel
- By: Yasunari Kawabata
- Narrated by: Ami Okumura Jones
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With the Second World War only a few years in the past, and Japan still reeling from its effects, two sisters—born to the same father but different mothers—struggle to make sense of the new world in which they are coming of age. Asako, the younger, has become obsessed with locating a third sibling, while also experiencing love for the first time. While Momoko, their father’s first child—haunted by the loss of her kamikaze boyfriend and their final, disturbing days together—seeks comfort in a series of unhealthy romances.
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The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
- By: Yukio Mishima
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A band of savage 13-year-old boys reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'objectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard this disallusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.
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Unsettling writing, flawed reading
- By Erez on 11-22-12
By: Yukio Mishima
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The Sound of Waves
- By: Yukio Mishima
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. A young fisherman is entranced at the sight of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. They fall in love, but must then endure the calumny and gossip of the villagers.
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Remote Japanese island beautifully depicted
- By Bruce on 09-17-15
By: Yukio Mishima