Soseki’s work of gentle humour and doomed innocence depicts twenty-three-year-old Sanshiro, a recent graduate from a provincial college, as he begins university life in the big city of Tokyo. Baffled and excited by the traffic, the academics and – most of all – the women, Sanshiro must find his way amongst the sophisticates that fill his new life. An incisive social and cultural commentary, Sanshiro is also a subtle study of first love, tradition and modernization, and the idealism of youth against the cynicism of middle age.

This Penguin Classics edition of Soseki’s beloved novel is translated by Jay Rubin with an introduction by Haruki Murakami.