Kazushige Abe – författare

>p>An off-kilter darkly ironic novella about a boy's strange obsession with the Japanese crested ibis, from a Japanese literary star

Seventeen-year-old Haruo spends all his waking hours online, fixated on the endangered Japanese crested ibis, Nipponia Nippon. Alone in his Tokyo apartment, living off his parents' indulgence, he descends into a fantasy world where he alone shares a bond with the last of these noble birds, their lives caged in the national conservation centre.

Haruo's destiny becomes clear. He will free the birds-alive or dead-from an undeserving civilization. As Haruo's emotional state grows increasingly erratic, he searches the internet for weapons and prepares for the night of reckoning.

Shiori knows that she was destined to sing - even if she is completely tone-deaf. Forced to give up her dream of becoming a travelling troubadour, she moves to Tokyo at eighteen to forge a career in music, whatever the cost.But she quickly becomes isolated in this vast new city, and even the people she calls friends take advantage of her naivety. Then one day, she is entrusted with a secret of enormous power. If she chooses to, she can take revenge on the world.Shot through with dark irony and a playful sense of the absurd, Mysterious Setting is a propulsive and gloriously strange story of innocence and experience.