Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0977857603, Paperback)

"Extravagance and horror are in his work but never in his style, which is always crystal clear."-Jorge Luis Borges

"In [Akutagawa's] spare, textured prose . . . he brings us clear-eyed glimpses of human behavior."-The New York Times Book Review

In Mandarins, Ryunosuke Akutagawa blends a sense of sad inevitability with -subtle irony. Reflective and often humorous, these tales reveal an enormous amount about Japanese culture, while the inner struggles of the characters always strike the universal.