Patient X: The Case-Book of Ryunosuke Akutagawa

An extraordinary novel from the legendary David Peace, about Akutagawa, one of Japan's greatest ever writers. David Peace is a true original - this novel is one for fans of David Mitchell, Kazuo Ishiguro and Ali Smith. Ryunosuke Akutagawa was one of Japan’s great writers - author of the stories Rashomon and In a Bamboo Grove, most famously - who lived through Japan’s turbulent Taisho period of 1912 to 1926, including the devastating 1923 Earthquake, only to take his own life at the age of just 34 in 1927. These are the stories of Patient X in one of our iron castles. He will tell his tales to anyone with the ears and the time to listen. Inspired and informed by Akutagawa’s stories, essays and letters, David Peace has fashioned a most extraordinary novel of tales. An intense, passionate, haunting paean to one writer, it also thrillingly explores the act and obsession of writing itself and the role of the artist, both in public and private life, in times which darkly mirror our own.