For fans of
No Longer Human
, Osamu Dazai’s darkly bewitching novel about the small redemptions of being a pathetic, miserable writer.
A fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher an awful manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Wandering along a river in a nearby park in suburban Tokyo, he meets a high-school dropout and the two get into an intellectual spat. Eventually, Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in the boy’s place that very night as the live narrator of a film screening…
So begins the madcap adventure of
The Beggar Student
, where there is glamor in destitution and glimmerings of truth in intellectual one-upmanship. Replete with settings straight out of the popular anime
Bungo Stray Dogs
and echoes of the themes in
, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.