I Guess All We Have Is Freedom - Selected Short Stories

Gravestones hatch political critiques and tomatoes resist being eaten in the wildly surreal and funny stories of Genpei Akasagawa, a giant of the Japanese avant-garde

There is a small but potent club of authors-Miranda July and Patti Smith are both members-who were renowned artists long before they became writers. Genpei Akasagawa was already a giant of the Japanese contemporary art world when he began writing these stories, which earned him Japan-s two most prestigious book awards.

In these stories, ostensibly quiet tales of a single dad in 1970s Tokyo, a doorknob practices radical politics, a peeled tomato smarts in pain, raw oysters tick like time bombs and gravestones provide a critique of capitalism. After reading I Guess All We Have Is Freedom, you will never be able to look at a sliding door, a rubber band or a plastic gutter the same way again. In spite of their suburban settings, the stories here are more radical than the most cosmopolit