Patient X: The Case-Book of Ryunosuke Akutagawa - Paperback

by David Peace (Author)

In these twelve interconnected tales, David Peace--acclaimed author of the Red Riding Quartet, Occupied City, and Tokyo Year Zero--weaves fact and fiction as he takes up the brief but fiercely lived life of the early-twentieth-century Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Unique and offbeat, Patient X delves into Akutagawa's rich and complicated private life: his fears and battles with mental illness; his complex reaction to the Westernization of Japan; his exacting creative process; and his suicide, weaving these facets into a hauntingly evocative portrait. But Patient X is more than a paean to one remarkable writer: it is also an incandescent exploration of the act and obsession of writing itself, and of the role of the artist in times that darkly mirror our own.

Author Biography

David Peace--named in 2003 one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists--was born and brought up in Yorkshire. He is the author of the Red Riding Quartet (Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three); GB84, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; The Damned Utd and Red or Dead, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. The final part of his Tokyo Trilogy--to follow Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City--will appear after Patient X, his tenth novel. He lives in Tokyo.