A Fool's Life

Akutagawa Ryunosuke's A Fool's life has been translated from the Japanese by Anthony Barnett, OA and Toraiwa Naoko. Akutagawa's writings include reworkings of motifs and tales of China's and Japan's past, modern fables, essays and a few autobiographical fictions which, like A Fool's Life, follow his intense engagement and difficulty with the world. He ended his brief life the month after completing A Fool's Life.

Anthony Barnett is not the first Old Alleynian to publish translations from Asia, EB Howell (1893-1897), translated Chin Ku Ch'i Kuan The Inconstancy of Madam Chuang and other Stories from the Chinese in the 1920's.

Anthony Barnett will be one of the subjects of an exhibition on Old Alleynian poets in the Wodehouse Library in February 2008.