A review by jenna_le
Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki

5.0

A story about human fallibility, the universality and inescapability of sin, and the relentlessness of guilt and self-punishment, told with tremendous elegance and many beautiful internal symmetries, as unputdownable as a whodunit, as psychologically penetrating as Henry James, and as simple and stark as a Greek tragedy. Kokoro also happens to be a work of cultural interest, one of the early modern Japanese novels and an elegy for a dying era in Japanese history, but, really, anyone who has ever flagellated himself or herself for an unatonable offense against a fellow human being will find something in this perfect little book that resonates.