The two years that Sóseki spent in London - "the most unhappy" of his life - were fundamental to the emergence of his literary genius. The brief texts gathered here offer the relationship - and often the transfiguration - of his London experience in pages full of poetic content. Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was born in Edo (Tokyo) in the middle of the Meiji era, a time of great changes for a Japan involved in an intense modernization process. Soseki became immensely popular with his first novels, Botchan and I am a cat, in which he explored the psychological problems of his fellow citizens with acute perception and fine sense of humor. He studied English literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo, worked as an English teacher for a few years and was later sent to England with a scholarship from the Japanese government to perfect his knowledge of the English language. The texts collected in this volume are a reflection of his experience in London, of his experiences in the immense metropolis, which overwhelmed and oppressed him, and in which he felt completely maladaptive, to the point that he almost fell into the alienation mental. The penetrating and poetic vision of Sóseki transforms the daily and anodyne experiences of life, as well as the overwhelming scenario of the metropolis, in scenes and stories of strong dream content and strange poetry, makes them, in short, literature of the highest quality.