nomadreader

The backstory: I've been having a wonderful year reading more deliberately in terms of reading award-winning literature, but I haven't followed through on my goal of reading the classics. When I heard about the Meiji-era Japanese Classics tour, I decided to sign up. With the choice to pick anything written in Japan between 1868 and 1912, I chose Natsume Soseki's The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London. My thoughts: The edition I read, which was translated by Damien Flanagan opens with a lengthy introduction and biography of Soseki. I found it incredibly helpful, as I knew very little about him in general or where this work fell in his chronology. While I probably would have enjoyed this work without the background knowledge, I wouldn't have understood nearly as much of it without Flanagan's introduction. Soseki was one of three writers hand-picked by the Japanese government to spend two years in England. Soseki was not excited to go to London, and had t...