Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness

In The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, a self-absorbed narrator on his deathbed drifts off to the comforting strains of a cantata as he recalls a blistering childhood of militarism, sacrifice, humiliation, and revenge-a tale that is questioned by everyone who knew him. In Prize Stock, winner of the Akutagawa Prize, a black American flier is downed in a Japanese village during World War II, where the local children see him as some rare find-exotic and forbidden. In Aghwee the Sky Monster, the floating ghost of a baby inexplicably haunts a young man on the first day of his first job. And in the title story, a devoted father believes he is the only link between his mentally challenged son and reality.