A cat who looks like Orson Welles and is the grim reaper. A murder in a secret society of chivalric knights in a high school. An utterly disturbing tale involving rabbits and fathers. These short stories by Mieko Kanai, first published in Japan in the 1970s, are teeming with transgressive sexuality, nightmares, knotty family ties, endless labyrinths, and metafictional themes that seem to unfold into illogical but deeply satisfying puzzles.

Finally translated into English by the brilliant Polly Barton, these stories are an important (and previously missing) piece of the Japanese literary canon, bridging the eroticism of Tanizaki and the surrealism of Kobo Abe with the contemporary literature of Haruki Murakami, Hiroko Oyamada, and Sayaka Murata.