Tales grotesque and curious by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
"Tales grotesque and curious" by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. The pieces blend folklore, history, and religion with sharp psychological insight, moving from Buddhist parables to macabre legends and modern ironies. Expect tight, elegant prose exploring vanity, temptation, cruelty, and compassion through monks, thieves, professors, demons, and ordinary people caught in moral tests. The opening of the collection begins with translator Glenn W.
Shaw’s biographical introduction, sketching Akutagawa’s Tokyo life, influences (Sōseki, Flaubert, Morris), meticulous craft, recurring grotesque humor, and notes on the included tales. It then presents a run of signature stories: in “Tobacco and the Devil” a disguised demon brings tobacco to Japan and is outwitted by a cattle dealer; in “The Nose” a vain priest shortens his grotesque nose only to find fresh ridicule; “The Handkerchief” shows a bereaved mother’s stoic poise and a professor’s uneasy reflections on Bushidō and theatricality; “Rashōmon” follows a dismissed servant who, after confronting an old hag plucking hair from corpses, chooses theft; “Lice” comically chronicles lice-ridden samurai debating whether to keep or kill their tormentors; and “The Spider’s Thread” tells of a sinner who loses salvation through selfishness. The start of “The Wine Worm” sets a heat-struck tableau—a bound drunkard, an eccentric priest, and a Confucian scholar—poised to unfold another curious moral fable. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke, 1892-1927 |
|---|---|
| Translator | Shaw, Glenn W. (Glenn William), 1886-1961 |
| Title | Tales grotesque and curious |
| Original Publication | Japan: The Hokuseido Press, 1930. |
| Contents | Tobacco and the devil -- The nose -- The handkerchief -- Rashōmon -- Lice -- The spider's thread -- The wine worm -- The badger -- The ball -- The pipe -- Mōri Sensei. |
| Credits | Hendrik Kaiber and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PL: Language and Literatures: Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania |
| Subject | Japan -- Social life and customs -- Fiction |
| Subject | Short stories, Japanese -- Translations into English |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78105 |
| Release Date | Mar 4, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 5663 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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