The Coat That Covers Him: and Other Stories

Michael Hoffman's characters are, willy-nilly, participants in plots that don't add up. Some emerge stronger; others, shadows of their former selves. The six stories and one novel that make up this collection are set, wholly or primarily, in Japan, land of the artful mask. Meet the man who loses his key and sets in motion a chain of events whose incomprehensibility he will never understand; a small girl who accosts a fugitive murderer (is he really a murderer?) for sex, only to be admonishe...