Ryuosuke Akutagawa was one of Japan's great writers. He lived through Japan's turbulent Taisho period, including the devastating 1923 earthquake, only to take his own life at the age of just thirty-five in 1927.

Inpsired by Akutagawa's stories, essays and letters, David Peace has fashioned an extraordinary novel of tales. An intense, passionate, haunting paean to one writer, it also thrillingly explores the act of writing itself, and the role of the artist, both in public and private life, in times which darkly mirror our own.