This author is thematically paired with Machado de Assis (“ma-SHAH-doo jee ah-SEESE”) in a chapter of Edwin Frank’s book Stranger Than Fiction. That chapter highlights a novel by this author in which a businessman ostracized for his love marriage fails to understand a koan about his face before birth. In a novel by this Anglophilic author of The Gate, a man is enraged when children put grasshoppers in his bed. One of this author’s characters commits suicide after the death of an admiral, in part because as a young man he stole a landlady’s daughter from his friend K, and is called “Sensei” by a nameless student narrator. One of this author’s title characters is a math teacher who beats up the vice principal Red Shirt before moving to Tokyo to live with the servant Kiyo. For 10 points, name this Meiji-era author of Kokoro and Botchan. ■END■
ANSWER: Natsume Sōseki [or Natsume Soseki; or Natsume Kin’nosuke]
<Chicago A, World Literature>
= Average correct buzz position