A unique anthology of ten stories set in the dazzling metropolis of contemporary Tokyo, translated into English for the first time.

The Book of Tokyo collects 10 stories by some of Japan's most exciting contemporary short story writers. Together, the stories form a kind of literary map of the city's ever-changing districts through its fiction. With works of literary fiction, crime, science fiction, and horror, the anthology provides an imaginative tour of the city for short story fans and travelers alike.

At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place - a naive book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time... The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people's company. As one character puts it, 'The world is full of delicious things, you know.'