No Longer Human

I almost feel like the 5+ years it would take to be able to read this book in Japanese would be worth it.

My favorite thing about this book is that it doesn't get better. Dazai relentlessly builds on the inborn suffering the narrator holds–the locus of which seems to be his existence itself. Of course, the irony of this man that builds a mask and rots away internally–until even his façade crumbles–is that his struggles are human through and through.