Sanshiro (Penguin Clothbound Classics)

xlix, 235 pp. Translated with notes by Jay Rubin, and an introduction by Haruki Murakami. Cloth cover illustrated by the award winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. First published in 1908 in Japan. Soseki's work of gentle humor and doomed innocence depicts twenty-three-year-old Sanshiro, a recent graduate from a provincial college, as he begins university life in the big city of Tokyo. Baffled and excited by the traffic, the academics and - most of all - the women, Sanshiro must find his way amongst the sophisticates who fill his new life. An incisive social and cultural commentary, Sanshiro is also a subtle study of first love, tradition, modernization, and the idealism of youth against the cynicism of middle age.