This Outcast Generation and Luminous Moss

The two novelettes by contemporary Japanese writer Taijun Takeda that are contained in this book were chosen for their overall excellence to be included in our current Library of Japanese Literature series. Both stories are relatively modern, one dealing with an incident of cannibalism in Hokkaido during World War II and the other about the Japanese who lived in Shanghai following the defeat. This Outcast Generation, according to the translators," is basically an existentialist novel and it...