These are short stories from an unparalleled icon of modern Japanese literature. Sublimely crafted and shotthrough with a fantastical sensibility, they offer dazzling glimpses into moments of madness, murder and obsession. A talented and spiteful painter is givenover to depravity in pursuit of artistic brilliance. In the depths of hell, arobber spies a single spider's threadbeing lowered towards him. When abody is found in an isolated bamboogrove, a kaleidoscopic account ofviolence and desire begins to unfold.