This novel tracks one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, to unite East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy. Japan's most widely-read and controversial writer, author of A Wild Sheep Chase, hurtles into the consciousness of the West with this narrative about a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters--not to mention Bob Dylan and Lauren Bacall.