Updated September 2026
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All free classicsAbout Natsume Sōseki
Natsume Sōseki was a Japanese novelist, poet, and scholar. He is considered one of the greatest writers in modern Japanese history and is often called the first modern novelist of Japan. Sōseki's fiction explored themes of individualism, loneliness, and the conflict between traditional Japanese values and the rapid Westernization of the Meiji era. His major works include I Am a Cat (1905), Botchan (1906), Sanshirō (1908), Kokoro (1914), and his unfinished final novel Light and Dark (1916).
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Sources: book lists and dates from Wikidata and Open Library, ratings from Open Library readers, free texts from Project Gutenberg. Last updated September 2026.

