The Gate
New York Review Books · Paperback · December 4, 2012
An NYRB Classics Original A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo.
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- Who it’s for
- A restrained domestic story finds beauty and gentle wit in a household under strain.
- Themes
- Marital hardship, Family obligation, Meditation and self-examination
- Pacing
- Reflective
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For younger readers: Go, How Do You Live?, Festival of Shadows
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An NYRB Classics Original A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families’ consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sōsuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sōsuke’s brash younger brother.
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While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, Sōsuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament. This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan’s greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume Sōseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.
Quietly Unsettled
A restrained domestic story finds beauty and gentle wit in a household under strain.
Come here for
- Intimate marriage and family tensions
- A reflective turn toward Zen and uncertainty
Expect
- Melancholy softened by glimmers of joy
- Oblique, understated storytelling with gentle wit
Where it sits
| Japanese Fiction | 90% |
|---|---|
| Literary Fiction | 50% |
| The Classics | 49% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Literary Fiction
- Marriage & Divorce
- Japanese Fiction
- Authors
- Natsume Soseki
- Publisher
- New York Review Books
- Published
- December 4, 2012
- Format
- Paperback
- Theme
- Marital hardship · Family obligation · Meditation and self-examination
- Reading lane
- Literary Fiction