A review by firistars
Breaking Into Japanese Literature: Seven Modern Classics in Parallel Text by Giles Murray

3.0

It was just okay. The beginning of the book wasn't bad but by the time I got to level two, it was super hard to understand. It's not like I'm native level or something but I majored in the language, lived in the country, and I'm taking the N2 in December so I think I'm decent. However, there was a lot of Japanese I've never used before because it's not modern Japanese, and there were a lot of cases where kanji was used with words that are almost always written in hiragana while there were words in hiragana that are almost always written in kanji. Just all around confusing. The English translations were kind of loose as well so it wasn't super helpful when I struggled with the Japanese texts. I also just didn't really like the stories which is my fault I guess. I really don't like Sōseki and this book has a lot of his stories. I guess my favorite was probably Akutagawa's "The Nose". "In a Grove" and "Rashomon" were grueling to get through. It was only these two authors and they were all horror centered so there wasn't really any variety and it just really wasn't my cup of tea. I have Murray's companion book "Exploring Japanese Literature" which I know has stories like "Snow Country" which I've read in English before, so maybe I'll like that one better. 2.5 Stars.