Yasutaka Tsutsui (b. 1934) is perhaps the last classic of modern Japanese literature, still unknown to the Russian reader, winner of many awards, including the Tanizaki Prize and the Yasunari Kawabata Prize. He has been called the "Japanese Philip K. Dick" and the "spiritual father of Haruki Murakami"; many of his books were filmed - for example, based on the novel “Paprika”, Satoshi Kon directed the famous anime of the same name, and the novel “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” served as the basis for two full-length films and two television series, manga and anime. In the collection brought to your attention, bonsai evokes erotic dreams, and a simple Tokyo clerk suddenly becomes the object of attention of all the media, a Japanese sales representative is forced to go to hourly service in the army of the African country of Galibia, the authorities of the floating city Marine City refuse to acknowledge this obvious fact, and the last one in the country a smoker sat on the roof of parliament, fighting off gas attacks from Air Force helicopters... For the first time in Russian.