The Gate
by Natsume Soseki
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Pub Date Dec 04 2012 | Archive Date Jan 07 2013
New York Review of Books | NYRB Classics
Description
A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families’ consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sōsuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke’s brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, Sōsuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament.
This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan’s greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.
Advance Praise
"Released in 1910, The Gate is among top Japanese novelist Soseki’s best-known works. A man suddenly abandons his loving wife to enter a life of contemplation in a Zen temple. He goes looking for answers but finds only more questions." —Library Journal
"A sensitive, skillfully written novel by the most widely read Japanese author of modern times." —The Guardian
"Soseki’s prose is so delicate that each page is like looking at a set of dreamy watercolors." —Sunday Telegraph
"The Gate is not so much tragic or comic as a graceful balance between the dispiriting and the humorous … The Gate is surely the kind of writing we need a masterpiece of taste and clarity." —New Statesman
"The Gate is almost devoid of dramatic incidents, but halting conversations of a quite ordinary husband and wife have a peculiar poignance because their love is the one abiding element in their lives. The descriptions of Sōsukie’s house and its surroundings are as precise as in a Naturalist novel, and the atmosphere of almost featureless days is unfalteringly conveyed, but the novel never becomes boring, no doubt because of the excellence of the writing." —Donald Keene
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781590175873 |
| PRICE | $16.95 (USD) |
