An incandescent exploration of the act and obsession of writing itself, and of the role of the artist in times that darkly mirror our own, 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 a deeply rooted fascination with Akutagawa and inspired and informed by his stories, essays, and letters, David Peace delves into the writer's rich and complicated private life: his mother's mental illness; his own fears and battles with mental illness; his complex reaction to the beginnings of the modernization and Westernization of Japan; his exacting creative process; his suicide. Here Peace weaves these facets of Akutagawa's makeup into a hauntingly evocative portrait that tells its own story of a singularly brilliant mind.