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/lit/ - Literature

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>> No.16186902 [View]
File: 333 KB, 1500x2400, KenjiMiyazawa.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16186902

I just finished pic related and it was supremely comfy. These 24 stories written around the 1920s are allegorical fables about spirituality, forgiveness, compassion, the beauty of untouched nature, the growing pains of modernization, and many other such themes.
The sheer range of emotions conveyed by these stories is unmatched for me. There isn't a single one that isn't perfectly crafted to draw an incredible emotional reaction from the reader. Acorns and mushrooms who wear tailored clothes and impart wisdom, the personified young snow's remorse at killing an exposed child, tricky foxes and cats out to ruin their neighbors, songs and dances from deer and bear culture, elephant slavery, and lots of violent, sad tales of manipulation are nestled between beautiful plotless snapshots of say, an underwater ocean crab and its father just hanging out.
Any object in the story (a dahlia, a rat trap, a basement support pillar) is liable to come to life and speak to any other person, animal, plant, or object as if they were both two people conversing. The result of that is dizzying, kind of surreal and dreamlike. But then other stories still are just human, such as one about a child with a happy family who feels compassion for a homeless man.
Some of the stories even have hilarious shocking little twists around themes of labor, the law, and the absurd horrors of modernization that remind me of Kafka, who was writing around the same time halfway around the globe. Any other short stories like this? Stuff like Miyazawa or Kafka? I haven't read many short stories, mostly novels. They don't have to be about animals or written in the 1920s, but maybe someone has read both these authors and can help me out with a recommendation.

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