Conversation with the God of Another Composition

If there is a desire to understand the Japanese soul and mentality — one must read the short prose of Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Read slowly and thoughtfully and reread again and again, catching hints and subtexts and discovering hidden depths of meaning beneath the clear surface. This collection includes works from different years — novellas and very short, succinct Japanese stories and miniatures, in which much more is implied (and, accordingly, interpreted) than what is written. Serious and ironic, yet invariably elegant stylizations of medieval prose, in which Akutagawa still has no equal among Japanese writers, sad and ironic tales and parables, and texts in a more Europeanized genre of psychological realism, which nevertheless the author invariably refracts through a completely national lens...