| Edition |
First American edition. |
| Description |
311 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm |
| Summary |
Haunting and evocative, brutal and surreal, these twelve connected tales evoke the life of the Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), whose short story "In the Grove" served as an inspiration for Akira Kurosawa's famous film Rashōmon, and whose narrative use of multiple perspectives and different versions of a single event influenced generations of storytellers. Writing out of his own obsession with Akutagawa, David Peace delves into the known facts and events of the writer's life and inner world--birth to a mother who was mentally ill and a father who died shortly thereafter; his own battles with mental illness; his complicated reaction to the beginnings of modernization and Westernization of Japan; his short but prolific writing career; his suicide at the age of thirty-five--and creates a stunningly atmospheric and deeply moving fiction that tells its own story of a singularly brilliant mind. |
| Contents |
After the thread, before the thread -- Hell screens -- Repetition -- Jack the Ripper's bedroom -- A twice-told tale -- The yellow Christ -- After the war, before the war -- The exorcists -- After the disaster, before the disaster -- "Saint Kappa" -- The spectres of Christ -- After the fact, before the fact -- Bare bones. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [303-308]). |
| Subject |
Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke, 1892-1927 -- Fiction.
|
| Genre/Form |
Biographical fiction.
|
|
Experimental fiction.
|
|
Novels.
|
|
Novels. (OCoLC)fst01921742
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Biographical fiction.
|
| ISBN |
9780525521778 (hardcover) |
|
0525521771 (hardcover) |
|
