
The Setting Sun
New Directions Book
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Narrated by:
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June Angela
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By:
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Osamu Dazai
About this listen
This powerful novel of a nation in social and moral crisis was first published by New Directions in 1956 - and now, for the first time, is available in audio, with the spellbinding narration of June Angela.
Set in the early postwar years, it probes the destructive effects of war and the transition from a feudal Japan to an industrial society. Ozamu Dazai died, a suicide, in 1948. But the influence of his book has made "people of the setting sun" a permanent part of the Japanese language, and his heroine, Kazuko, a young aristocrat who deliberately abandons her class, a symbol of the anomie which pervades so much of the modern world.
©1956 New Directions Publishing Corp. (P)2020 New Directions Publishing Corp.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
With The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face of Victorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler's death, the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhood and youth "in the bosom of a Christian family." With irony, wit, and sometimes rancor, he savaged contemporary values and beliefs, turning inside-out the conventional novel of a family's life through several generations.
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poor narrator
- By Marjorie on 08-11-12
By: Samuel Butler
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Kokoro
- By: Natsume Soseki
- Narrated by: Matt Shea
- Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The subject of Kokoro, which can be translated as 'the heart of things' or as 'feeling,' is the delicate matter of the contrast between the meanings the various parties of a relationship attach to it. In the course of this exploration, Soseki brilliantly describes different levels of friendship, family relationships, and the devices by which men attempt to escape from their fundamental loneliness. The novel sustains throughout its length something approaching poetry, and it is rich in understanding and insight.
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The Heart Of Things, Relationships & Feelings
- By Sara on 04-27-15
By: Natsume Soseki
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The Woman in the Dunes
- By: Kobo Abe
- Narrated by: Julian Cihi
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together, their fates become intertwined as they work side-by-side at this Sisyphean task.
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Nihilistic horror
- By Mr. Sagan on 07-20-19
By: Kobo Abe
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Kappa
- By: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
- Narrated by: Wallace Shawn
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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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.
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A commentary on societies
- By Jrod238 on 11-18-24
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Moshi Moshi
- By: Banana Yoshimoto, Asa Yoneda - translator
- Narrated by: Kathleen Li
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Yoshie's much-loved musician father died in a suicide pact with an unknown woman. It is only when Yoshie and her mother move to Shimokitazawa, a traditional Tokyo neighborhood of narrow streets, quirky shops, and friendly residents, that they can finally start to put their painful past behind them. However, despite their attempts to move forward, Yoshie is haunted by nightmares in which her father is looking for the phone he left behind on the day he died, or on which she is trying—unsuccessfully—to call him. Is her dead father trying to communicate a message through these dreams?
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The story is good but the performance is lacking
- By Juliana on 10-24-24
By: Banana Yoshimoto, and others
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Midnight's Children
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Lyndam Gregory
- Length: 24 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Salman Rushdie holds the literary world in awe with a jaw-dropping catalog of critically acclaimed novels that have made him one of the world's most celebrated authors. Winner of the prestigious Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children tells the story of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of India's independence.
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Outstanding book, superb narration
- By MarcS on 06-09-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Black Stallion
- By: Walter Farley
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When the steamer Drake is shipwrecked off the Spanish coast, only two passengers survive. One is Alec Ramsay, a young American boy. The other is the Black Stallion, the wildest of all wild creatures. Stranded together on a desert island, boy and stallion develop a deep and wonderful understanding. The Black Stallion is the horse Alec has always dreamed of - beautiful, free-spirited, and astonishingly strong. Alec is determined to tame him and bring him home to New York.
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A wonderful ride.
- By Richard Delman on 07-15-18
By: Walter Farley
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The Five Things We Cannot Change....
- And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
- By: David Richo
- Narrated by: Tom Pile
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this provocative and inspiring audiobook, David Richo distills 30 years of experience as a therapist to explain the underlying roots of unhappiness - and the surprising secret to finding freedom and fulfillment. There are certain facts of life that we cannot change - the unavoidable "givens" of human existence: (1) everything changes and ends, (2) things do not always go according to plan, (3) life is not always fair, (4) pain is a part of life, and (5) people are not loving and loyal all the time.
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ok
- By Justine Laliberte on 04-04-18
By: David Richo
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The Little Friend
- By: Donna Tartt
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The second novel by Donna Tartt, best-selling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence, and evil. The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved. So Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright and insufferably determined - sets out to unmask his killer.
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Couldn't put it down
- By Sam on 03-15-12
By: Donna Tartt
All good!
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Better tragedy than Shakespeare
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a worthwhile read in every sense.
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MORE OSAMU DAZAI TRANSLATIONS PLEASE!!!!!
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Simpleand complex all in one
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Beautiful and Sad Recording
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Amazing read
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Writing and Narration Perfect
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i really enjoyed this
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Another great work by Osamu Dazai!
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