Kusamakura [Grass Pillow] cover art

Kusamakura [Grass Pillow]

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Kusamakura [Grass Pillow]

By: Natsume Soseki, Meredith McKinney - translator
Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe, Elizabeth Jasicki
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About this listen

A stunning new English translation - the first in more than 40 years - of a major novel by the father of modern Japanese fiction.

Natsume Soseki's Kusamakura - meaning “grass pillow” - follows its nameless young artist-narrator on a meandering walking tour of the mountains. At the inn at a hot-spring resort, he has a series of mysterious encounters with Nami, the lovely young daughter of the establishment. Nami, or "beauty", is the center of this elegant novel, the still point around which the artist moves and the enigmatic subject of Soseki's word painting. In the author's words, Kusamakura is "a haiku-style novel, that lives through beauty". Written at a time when Japan was opening its doors to the rest of the world, Kusamakura turns inward, to the pristine mountain idyll and the taciturn lyricism of its courtship scenes, enshrining the essence of old Japan in a work of enchanting literary nostalgia.

©2020 Natsume Soseki (P)2021 Penguin Audio Classics Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Fiction Feel-Good

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wonderful story by a Brilliant author truly a Beautiful story well read all in all just superb

superb

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The story is “of its time” and — provided viewed like this — it is pretty interesting, depicting Japan at the turn of the 19th/20th century as the country opened up to outside influences and was irrevocably changed. Some beautiful descriptions. However without the very helpful preface I’d be been lost.

The narrator of the story I found absolutely terrible. Penguin chose a Japanese reader and whilst that is understandable it is also questionable. The narrator spoke English like a machine. Inflections were wrong and pacing was ridiculous. Given that the text WAS translated why did we need to hear a really bad rendition of an English text?? The end notes were daft too. How can an audible listener benefit from notes to all chapters read at the end of the book when the relevant chapters were listened to ages back? And frustratingly those chapters would have been enriched by those references being given at the end of each chapter.

Overall this feels like a worthy production that needs much more thought to be truly effective.

Badly produced audible experience

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