THE ISLE OF SOUTH KAMUI AND OTHER STORIES

A young Tokyoite doctor accepts a post on a remote island south of Okinawa. When a highly contagious fatal disease breaks out, he has to choose between saving himself or saving others.

A hormone-ridden teenage youth left alone with his young stepmother following his father’s death is consumed with jealousy as her affections turn to another man.

A journalist in search of answers travels from the metropolis to a bleak shore on the Japan Sea and eventually the furthest extreme of ice-bound Hokkaido, as he investigates the suicide of a young man.

In a backstreet of the metropolis, a wily old detective follows his hunches to nail the murderer of a young prostitute.

A conflict arises between two detectives investigating the shocking suicide of a 6-year-old child, the son of a young actress famed for her immoral behavior. Can it really be suicide, or is it murder?

In this early collection of five short stories, Kyotaro Nishimura explores the criminal mind and what makes people do the unthinkable.

Kyotaro Nishimura is an award-winning author whose work includes mysteries, spy novels, parodies and historical novels. He received the Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1965 for “Tenshi no kizuato” (A Scar of an Angel) and the Japan Mystery Writers’ Association Prize in 1981 for “Shuchakueki satsujin jiken” (Murder at the Terminal Station).

Ginny Tapley Takemori has a BA in Japanese from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and an MA in Advanced Japanese Studies from the University of Sheffield. Her other published translations include works by Meiji-era authors Izumi Kyoka, Koda Rohan and Okamoto Kido, as well as contemporary authors Ryu Murakami, Hideo Furukawa, Hiroko Minagawa, Hiroe Suga, Sayaka Murata and others.