Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) is often considered the greatest modern Japanese novelist. In 1900, his government sent him to England for two years as 'Japan's first Japanese English literary scholar', but he had a miserable time there. Returning to Japan, he wrote his greatest novels, including Botchan, Sanshiro and Kokoro, as well as essays, haiku, and kanshi.
Jay Rubin is an American translator and academic. He is the translator of several of Haruki Murakami's major works, including Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Natsume Soseki's The Miner and Sanshiro and Ryunosuke Akutagawa's Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories. He is the author of Making Sense of Japanese, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words and a novel, The Sun Gods.
