In postwar Japan, Eiji Ogata is rescued from a life of homelessness and taken into Tsune Kokune's household, where he discovers a scheme to establish a new religion for profit. Through the tangled relationships surrounding Kokune, his wife, and her sister, the novel explores the struggle between faith and calculation, desire and redemption.

Amid a scheme built around a new religion, the story asks whether people will turn toward serpentine calculation or the dove-like impulse to pray.

Koji Uno's "Ryunosuke Akutagawa" is a biography in which a fellow writer and contemporary friend recounts Akutagawa's life and personality with affection. It brings Akutagawa into view not only as a literary master but also as a human being known at close range.

This biography quietly portrays Ryunosuke Akutagawa's life and literature through a friend's eyes.