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Kusamakura
Kusamakura
Dec 28, 2025 9:19 AM

Author:Natsume Soseki,Meredith McKinney

Kusamakura

Literally meaning 'Pillow of Grass', Kusamakura is Soseki's portrayal of an artist who opposes convention and logic, and shuns emotional involvement. Soseki's artist attempts to live as a hermit using other people as his stimuli for his sensations and reflections. The artist fluently and prolifically composes poetry, but finds himself unable to paint - despite befriending a beautiful young divorcee. He remains emotionally distanced from her for a long time and it is only one day when he sees compassion in her eyes that he finds himself able to paint her, but also reconnected with the emotional undercurrents he had hitherto tried to avoid, thereby ending his retreat from the world. Siseko's beautiful and haikuesque novel is infused with his own musings on art and nature, and helped to establish the novel as a major literary form in Japan.

Reviews

A beautiful depiction of addiction and hedonism

—— Russell Brand

A sexy, booze-fuelled adventure. Instantly entertaining and absorbing

—— Heat

Splendidly realised ... bravely un-saccharine

—— Daily Telegraph

Extraordinarily candid and moving ****

—— Mirror

Nihilistic, frank, brutal, embarrassing, depressing, funny and intensely gripping all at once

—— Glasgow Herald

Cameron reveals a darker edge to her writing by capturing the frustration and pains of obsession with dense detail. Cameron's story of self-discovery shows just how lost you can get, and her perfect references to the 80s and Australian culture pull you in head-first

—— Gay Times

This novel should carry a warning: its appeal will be greatest for fans either of Wagner and European history, or of politics and philosophy

—— Sunday Times

What Nazism owed to the British Empire fascinates Wilson, and his invention of Hitler's Americanised offspring invites us to relive the macabre history while acknowledging our own uncomfortable complicity in it... Bravely ambitious

—— Independent

Winnie and Wolf is a novel rich in philosophical reference - Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, thorny as you like - and ruminative pleasures

—— Evening Standard

Wilson's achievement is startling... Most contemporary English fiction looks rather etiolated and pointless by comparison

—— Hywel Williams , Guardian

It would be hard to name a more ambitious recent work of fiction... Wilson brilliantly evokes Wagner's music

—— Financial Times

Wilson has done his research impeccably and he writes superbly well

—— Literary Review

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton
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