Conversation with the God of Wanderings

If there is a desire to understand the Japanese soul and mentality, one must read the short prose of Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Read slowly and thoughtfully, and reread again and again, catching hints and subtexts and discovering hidden depths of meanings beneath the clear surface. This collection includes works from different years — novellas and very short, laconic Japanese stories and miniatures, in which much more is implied (and thus can be read) 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 fairy tales and parables, and texts in a more Europeanized genre of psychological realism, which, nevertheless, the author continuously refracts through a distinctly national lens...