Sōseki: Modern Japan's Greatest Novelist

Recently I have been catching up on reading the English translated novels of Natsume Soseki, so having read the lion share of them I was looking forward to John Nathan's Soseki: Modern Japan's Greatest Novelist (2018). The biography is divided into 17 chapters and look at significant periods of Soseki's life such as Chapter 4 "The Provinces" about his experiences as a teacher firs tin Matsuyama and then Kumamoto. Other chapters look at his experiences in London as well as significant periods when wrote some of his more famous novels. It seems the attention to certain novels are driven by Nathan's interest rather than general regard. For example he chose not to examine The Miner, the last novel I read by Soseki which has been pointed out by Haruki Murakami as a one of his favorite Soseki novels and a turning point in his writing style. He also devotes a significant number of pages to Light and Darkness, the last unpublished novel, more than earlier better known works such as I Am a Cat and Botchan. Overall, it was a pretty interesting and incisive look at one of Japan's greatest novels.