
The Beggar Student
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $6.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Brian Nishii
-
By:
-
Osamu Dazai
About this listen
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 No Longer Human, this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.
©2024 Sam Bett (P)2024 New Directions Publishing Corp.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Flowers of Buffoonery
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.
-
-
A meandering mess
- By Lucca ate your Lunch! on 01-17-24
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Early Light
- Storybook ND Series
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew.
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Kappa
- By: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
- Narrated by: Wallace Shawn
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary toddlers to their deaths in rivers: a scaly, child-sized creature, looking something like a frog, but with a sharp, pointed beak and an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, which hardens with age. Akutagawa’s Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic asylum: he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa.
-
-
A commentary on societies
- By Jrod238 on 11-18-24
-
The Lantern of Lost Memories
- By: Sanaka Hiiragi
- Narrated by: Hanako Footman
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaka, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard. Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time.
-
-
Quiet, magical feels...a bit like Harry
- By SHES4AMWF on 03-18-25
By: Sanaka Hiiragi
-
No Longer Human
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 4 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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. His 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, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
-
-
Great Short Novel
- By Patrick James Thomas on 02-26-25
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Self-Portrait
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor, Paul Maher Jr. - editor
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jack Kerouac’s archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped. This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to Paul Maher Jr.'s Becoming Kerouac, spans Kerouac’s adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to autobiographical reflections a few years before his death.
-
-
A well curated collection.
- By Stewart king on 08-01-24
By: Jack Kerouac, and others
-
The Flowers of Buffoonery
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 1 hr and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Flowers of Buffoonery opens in a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba—the narrator of No Longer Human at a younger age—is being kept after a failed suicide attempt. While he is convalescing, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.
-
-
A meandering mess
- By Lucca ate your Lunch! on 01-17-24
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Early Light
- Storybook ND Series
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 1 hr and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Early Light offers three very different aspects of Osamu Dazai's genius: the title story relates his misadventures as a drinker and a family man in the terrible fire bombings of Tokyo at the end of WWII. Having lost their own home, he and his wife flee with a new baby boy and their little girl to relatives in Kofu, only to be bombed out anew.
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Kappa
- By: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
- Narrated by: Wallace Shawn
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary toddlers to their deaths in rivers: a scaly, child-sized creature, looking something like a frog, but with a sharp, pointed beak and an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, which hardens with age. Akutagawa’s Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic asylum: he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa.
-
-
A commentary on societies
- By Jrod238 on 11-18-24
-
The Lantern of Lost Memories
- By: Sanaka Hiiragi
- Narrated by: Hanako Footman
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the story of the peculiar and magical photo studio owned by Mr. Hirasaka, a collector of antique cameras. In the dimly lit interior, a paper background is pulled down in front of a wall, and in front of it stands a single, luxurious chair with an armrest on one side. On a stand is a large bellows camera. On the left is the main studio; photos can also be taken in the courtyard. Beyond its straightforward interior, however, is a secret. The studio is, in fact, the door to the afterlife, the place between life and death where those who have departed have a chance—one last time.
-
-
Quiet, magical feels...a bit like Harry
- By SHES4AMWF on 03-18-25
By: Sanaka Hiiragi
-
No Longer Human
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 4 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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. His 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, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.
-
-
Great Short Novel
- By Patrick James Thomas on 02-26-25
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Self-Portrait
- Collected Writings
- By: Jack Kerouac, Charles Shuttleworth - editor, Paul Maher Jr. - editor
- Narrated by: T. Ryder Smith
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jack Kerouac’s archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped. This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to Paul Maher Jr.'s Becoming Kerouac, spans Kerouac’s adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to autobiographical reflections a few years before his death.
-
-
A well curated collection.
- By Stewart king on 08-01-24
By: Jack Kerouac, and others