No Longer Human

by Ben Taylor

No Longer Human is Osamu Dazai's semi-autobiographical masterpiece. Loosely based on his incredibly eventful and depressing life, he’s able to conjure true emotion about not feeling emotion. The overall theme of the book is loneliness and feeling detached from your own species, hence the name.

Since he was devoid of all emotion, Dazai writes major events in the book as though they do not matter.An example is in the very beginning of the book where passively mentions he’s on his third suicided attempt as though it were a minuscule event. He struggles with substance abuse, poverty, he even joins and leads an underground communist regime. I genuinely love this book, hands down one of my favorites i’ve ever read.

Dazai wrote this throughout his life while writing other pieces that were published

before No Longer Human. However he’s mainly known as the author of No Longer Human, his other stories are absolutely incredible as well and worth checking out.