No, I haven’t branched out into reviewing erotica. The title of Tsutsui’s collection is apt, however, as it features stories which are always bizarre and frequently feature sexual deviance. Of course, normality and sexual propriety are cultural constructs, and Tsutsui delights in tearing these apart to examine them. Amongst this apparently wanton destruction, the reader […]
“This isn’t a movie. It’s a short story.” In fact, it’s twenty of them, all written by popular Japanese author, Yasutaka Tsutsui, and selected from a career spanning over fifty years, which he admits is now coming to a close. “The ideas aren’t coming anymore,” he told Andrew Driver, translator of this rather miscellaneous, but […]
Love, obsession, faith, desire and redemption: ‘Jerusalem Ablaze’ is a collection of stories which burn with hunger. Today I’m welcoming Orlando Ortega-Medina to Buried Under Books as part of his blog tour to celebrate the recent publication of ‘Jerusalem Ablaze’, his debut collection of darkly humorous and strangely sensual short stories. Want to know more? Here’s the […]
I like to watch TV series in installments: ideally no more than one episode a night so I can savour each one, digesting the ideas and developments before moving on to the next. Gary A. Braunbeck’s collection of short stories requires the same approach. There are 40 stories in total but to gorge yourself on […]