# Botchan

- Author: Natsume Sōseki
- Translator: J. Cohn
- Original title (Japanese): 坊っちゃん
- First published: 1906
- Publisher: Penguin Classics
- This edition: 2013
- ISBN: 9780141391885
- Shelf: Tonight's Classic (one a night, from this pool); Japanese Literature in Translation

## Card

A hot-tempered young man from Tokyo takes a job teaching math at a country school and clashes with nearly everyone.  
Brisk and comic, told in a blunt first-person voice that hardly ever stops grumbling.  
For a night that needs a little laughter.  

## About this book

Raised as the family's reckless son and cherished only by an old housemaid, a young graduate leaves Tokyo for a teaching post in a provincial town on Shikoku. He meets pranking students, scheming colleagues, and a staff room full of people he nicknames on sight. Stubborn and plainspoken, he refuses to bend to the town's quiet politics. What remains is a fond, funny portrait of an honesty that will not learn to be tactful.

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