Two brilliant,multi-layered stories from the winner of the Kenzaburo Oe Prize: the best contemporary Japanese writing 'Nothing short of superb... This book gives me hope for the future of Japanese literature' Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature In two stunning tales by novelist-playwright Toshiki Okada, characters stagger and thrash, bound by a generational hunger for human connection. On the eve of the Iraq War a couple find unexpected deliverance - fleeting and anonymous - at a love hotel. And wheels spin as a woman aches for something more from her husband, even as she knows she has enough. Snapshots of moments high and low, these stories introduce us to an unsettlingly honest voice in contemporary Japanese fiction.

"Nothing short of superb... This book gives me hope for the future of Japanese literature... there is power in the flow of this writer's prose" - Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"Compact, ruthless, governed by a persuasive sense of dread... captures the ennui that has paralyzed a generation" - New York Times Book Review

"The stories are at their best - and their most baffling - when Okada topples our expectations and proceeds by way of surprise steps and wrong turns... Not all adds up, and not everyone makes sense, but the disorientation is half the fun" - Star Tribune