No Longer Human
Ranked #58 in 100 Most Popular BookTok and Bookstagram Books
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About No Longer Human
The poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: “The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing.” (The Japan Times)
Reader guide at a glance
Use these edition facts and spoiler-light notes to decide whether this book fits your mood, time, and preferred reading experience.
- Audience
- Adult/general
- Commitment
- Standalone or self-contained
- Estimated reading time
- 5.0 hours at about 40 pages per hour
- Length
- Shorter read
- Best for
- Readers seeking coming of age, emotional, literary fiction
Why readers are finding No Longer Human
No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, published in 2012, is a 196-page book for readers who prefer to browse by the experience of a story, not only by its sales category. Its strongest discovery signals include Coming of Age, Emotional, Literary Fiction.
This edition also appears at number 58 in our researched social reading top 100, reflecting current discussion across BookTok alongside longer-running reader interest. The ranking uses one verified English-language print ISBN per work so retailer links, cover metadata, and search results point to a real edition rather than a workbook, translation, or duplicate collector version.
- Print ISBN
- 978-0-811-22007-1
- Published
- 2012
- Pages
- 196
