The Phoenix
About this ebook
Sachiyo Takano, a charismatic young woman, travels from the countryside to a bustling prewar Tokyo, where she meets an irresistible stranger. They spend the night together, but things go sideways and never quite straighten out. Sachiyo wakes up in a hotel room, having survived a drug overdose, while her lover, whom she learns was an anarchist and a wanted criminal, is dead. The Phoenix chronicles how she rises from the ashes of this debacle--having heartfelt conversations with friends in the bars in Shinjuku and Asakusa, performing in a Chekhov play, finding herself in a love triangle, and chasing her new ambition of becoming an actress--even as the men drawn to Sachiyo continue to tear each other apart.
Appearing in translation for the first time ever, The Phoenix is classic Osamu Dazai at his poignant, cinematic, and euphoric best.
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About the author
The author of the global bestseller No Longer Human and The Setting Sun, Osamu Dazai (1909-1948) was famous for confronting head-on the social and moral crises of postwar Japan. He committed suicide by drowning in Tokyo’s Tamagawa Aqueduct.
Sam Bett is a fiction writer and Japanese translator. His translation of Yukio Mishima’s Star won the 2019–2020 Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.
