| ||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Kappa (Peter Owen Modern Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
A novel of exquisite precision --Spectator
A classic of our times, from a literature that deserves to be better known --Scotsman
Product Description
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Kappa is a satire of Japanese society and will probably remind readers of Sir Thomas More's 'Utopia', which satirised English society in the early sixteenth century. The tale is recounted by a doctor in a mental asylum, whose patient claims to have visited Kappaland and lived there for several years. In Kappaland, many things are very different from Japan; it is almost an inversion. Sexual and societal norms are turned on their heads, so that it is the women who voraciously pursue the men, for instance. Militarism is not eschewed in Kappaland as in Japan, but rather favoured as a method of population control. Abortion is not an issue, since children are asked, before emerging from the womb, if they wish to be born; if they do not, they are not, and instead shrivel away. Capitalism in particular comes under a particularly savage critique, with unemployed workers being eaten as a matter of course by the others. When the protagonist challenges this apparently barbaric practice, he is told that the practice of selling daughters into prostitution and capitalism's other deprevating effects as prevailing in Japan are far more barbaric.
Akutagawa apparenly saw himself as kappa-esque, and drew pictures of himself as a kappa, so there is the possibility that Kappa is quasi-autobiographical. He committed suicide shortly after this, his last work (and his masterpiece) was published; perhaps he considered that his aims had been fulfilled. Whatever his reasons, the author's life certainly gives an interesting additional spin to his final novel. Kappa: A Novel is a superb and stinging satire of post-war Japanese society that has relevant commentary spanning many other societies (indeed, Kappa can be read as a critique of the westernising path Japan has chosen to follow). Highly recommended and very entertaining.
In the tradition of "Gulliver's Travels," inside Kappaland, Akutagawa, author of "Rashomon" and "In the Grove," has created a twisted reflection of both his contemporary Japanese society and his own self-loathing. It has been a difficult tale to interpret in Japan, being hailed as either a children's story, a social satire or simply weird. Akutagawa himself feared insanity due to his mother's mental deterioration during his youth, and his own justified fear of the taint of madness in his blood.
Akutagawa's mental state when writing "Kappa" is important background, and the paperback edition comes with an extensive mini-biography of the famous author that is almost the size of the story itself. Akutagawa never wrote novels, and it is strange to see a single story packaged in one book. The introduction/biography is well written as well, and helps to reveal the story.
The writing in "Kappa" is sharp and quick-witted. The satire is equal parts clever and odd. Religion, marriage, arts and entertainment, all are in part skewered and skewed. The book is an incredibly fast read, and one that you will want to pass to your friends to read as well, so that you can see what someone else makes of it.
What still amazes me about this book (and other Akutagawa's works as well) is how the writer manages to develop characters (and in this case an entire imaginary culture) to such fullness, given the rather (spatially) limited medium of a novella.
Highly recommended reading.
This is a story about interactions of a human being, whose sanity is in question, and the Kappas, some mythical creatures. This is a satire in the essence that Akutagawa draws critical picture of Japanese intellectual society and their egos and vanity. The Kappa society is an equitable representation of the human society with the same set of problems but different set of solutions. This is one of those books which is a must for a good collection.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Children's Books > Classics
- Books > Fiction > Classics
- Books > Fiction > Literary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Myths & Fairy Tales
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
