One of Penguin Classics' most popular translations--now also in our
elegant black spine dress
Ryünosuke Akutagawa is one of Japan's foremost stylists--a modernist
master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery,
cynicism, beauty and wild humour. Rashömonand In a Bamboo Grove inspired
Kurosawa's magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is
turned upside down, while tales such as The Nose, O-Gin and Loyalty
paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by
Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as
Death Register, The Life of a Stupid Man, and Spinning Gears, Akutagawa
drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense
melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic
stories.
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