Born in 1952 in Nagasaki prefecture, RYU MURAKAMI is the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature. Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his first book, he has gone on to explore with cinematic intensity the themes of violence and technology in contemporary Japanese society. Murakami is also a screenwriter and director; among his films are Tokyo Decadence, Audition and Because of You. His novels Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa Era and From the Fatherland, with Love are also available from Pushkin Press.

'Ably encapsulates the fin de siècle cultural detonation of Japanese youth... Snyder's agile translation preserves much of the shock, beauty, and pathos in this apocalyptic minisaga of troubled times'