To j jsem umnm (2026)

This collection presents Osamu Dazai across the full range of his work: as a merciless observer of his own weaknesses, an ironic commentator on the literary world, an original storyteller and a darkly comic master of retelling. His autobiographical prose, returning to his years in Tokyo, poverty, addictions, love, guilt and a sense of rootlessness, appears alongside inventive adaptations of Japanese fairy tales, Chinese motifs and the biblical story. In every text, the authors wounded, doubtful and exceptionally perceptive self reappears, sometimes tragic and sometimes grotesque, but always painfully alive. The collection brings together penetrating and surprisingly humorous short stories that have not previously been published in book form in Czech. An afterword by translator Veronika Abbasov explores Dazais life, work and place in the history of Japanese literature. The contents are in Czech.