No Longer Human

About

Oba Yozo has been performing since childhood — clowning, agreeing, pretending to be human in the way that actual humans seem to manage effortlessly. Inside, he is terrified. Of other people, of himself, of the gap between what he shows the world and what he actually is. His confession traces a descent through addiction, failed relationships, and the growing conviction that he has never been a real person at all. Osamu Dazai's semi-autobiographical novel, published the year of his suicide, remains one of the most searing accounts of alienation ever written — not because it dramatises suffering, but because it makes the reader understand how suffering can feel like the only honest response to being alive. A book that has never stopped being modern, because the loneliness it describes has never gone away.

Awards

• ★Modern Classic(1948)