Botchan
Penguin Classics · first published 1906 · 112 pages
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.