The Beggar Student

A fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher an awful manuscript, filling him with shame and dread. Wandering along a river in a nearby park in suburban Tokyo, he meets a high-school dropout, and the two get into an intellectual spat. Eventually, Dazai finds himself agreeing to stand in for the boy that very night as the live narrator of a film screening...

So begins the madcap adventure of The Beggar Student, where destitution and misery have their own glamor, and intellectual one-upmanship reveals glimmers of truth. Replete with settings appearing in the popular anime "Bungo Stray Dogs" and with echoes of "No Longer Human", this biting novella captures the infamous Japanese writer at his mordant best.