No Longer Human

The poignant & fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family & the impact of Western ideas.

Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. Oba Yozo's attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, & eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. 

Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life & its fleeting moments of human connection & tenderness.

New York Times:

This modernist classic from the midcentury Japanese author Dazai,
translated by Donald Keene, is presented as a found diary of despair by a man whose social anxiety convinces him that he has never been happy. His egoistic pessimism, presented with surprising charm, has taken off on social media in recent years.

“There's something oddly ingratiating about Dazai’s despair. His characters’
candidness about their cruelty & selfishness ... paradoxically renders
them vulnerable.”

From Andrew Martin’s review