Why did the Lovecraftian monster Cthulhu come to life in our days, and S. Rushdie, together with C. Kracht, are waiting for a messiah from the East? Where do the trees go in V. Votrin’s fairy tales, what is hidden in the castle of pain from the story by Yu. Kisina, and who dreams of triple dreams in the stories of A. Ilichevsky? Why are Japanese literature, dystopian novels and lesbian poetry so popular? And, finally, why do the difficult reflections on the Nazi past of E. Jünger and E. Cioran, the dispute between P. Esterházy and M. Kundera with the communist system and the ecumenistic ideas of L. Ulitskaya become the focus of public interest? Alexander Chantsev, a Japanese literary scholar, literary critic, and regular contributor to the New Literary Review, tries to answer these and many other questions in his book.