Download or read book Square Persimmon and Other Stories written by Takashi Atoda and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Square Persimmon and Other Stories is an introduction to Takashi Atoda—one of Japan's most popular and versatile writers of fiction. Takashi Atocia is a master storyteller. Like the bar madam in "The Glow of Lipstick," he is capable of weaving a tale that captures the reader's attention from beginning to end. His plots deal with ordinary people, yet the emotional impact of each story is unusually strong. His down-to-earth characters inhabit a world that may at first appear familiar, but Atoda can so manipulate a scene that suddenly the reader is wondering whether it is reality or illusion that he is observing. Many stories feature bizarre endings. In these eleven stories, Atoda examines universal themes-first love, lost love, change, fate-through unmistakably Japanese eyes. The dreamlike quality of some stories invites the reader to draw his own conclusions in the denouement. Yet, in each one, Atoda brings to bear his precise style and his own unique vision, by turns mysterious, romantic, darkly humorous, and even bizarre.