Author(s): Ryunosuke Akutagawa; Brian Karetnyk (Translator)

Short Stories | Translated fiction | Japan

'One never tires of reading and re-reading his best works. Akutagawa was a born short-story writer' - Haruki Murakami

The stories in this fantastical, unconventional collection are subtly wrought depictions of the darkness of our desires. From an isolated bamboo grove, to a lantern festival in Tokyo, to the Emperor's court, they offer glimpses into moments of madness, murder, and obsession. Vividly translated by Bryan Karetnyk, they unfold in elegant, sometimes laconic, always gripping prose. Akutagawa's stories are characterised by their stylish originality; they are stories to be read again and again.

Review: One never tires of reading and re-reading his work. Akutagawa was a born short-story writer. - Haruki Murakami

The quintessential writer of his era. - David Peace

Extravagance and horror are in his work but never in his style, which is always crystal-clear. - Jorge Luis Borges

He was both traditional and experimental and always compelling and fearless... There is no writer quite like him. - Howard Norman

Author Biography: Ryunosuke Akutagawa was one of Japan's leading literary figures in the Taisho period in Japan. Regarded as the father of the Japanese short story, he produced over 150 in his short lifetime and is renowned as a pre-eminent prose stylist and modernist whose work ranges from the fantastical and supernatural to the psychological and formally unconventional. Haunted by the fear that he would inherit his mother's madness, his mental health deteriorated rapidly towards the end of his life and he committed suicide aged 35 by taking an overdose of barbital.