Kappa

Name: Kappa
Price: 24.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9781805332480

Ryunosuke Akutagawa, G.H. Healey, Geoffrey Bownas

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Japanese

Pushkin Press
24 March 2026

Fiction & Literature; Classic fiction (pre c 1945); Fiction in translation; Monsters & legendary beings

In early 20th-century Japan, a lone hiker falls through a hole in the ground into Kappaland. This is a place ruled by amphibious creatures who share characteristics with tigers and turtles, but who, for all their strangeness, shed light on the human condition.

In Kappaland children choose whether or not to be born, intellectuals think nothing of drinking themselves to death as part of a cultural demonstration, unemployed workers are saved the bother of supporting themselves by being turned into sandwich meat, and artistic rebels from the human realm are enshrined in the Great Tabernacle as saints. Gruesome as life there is in some ways, the Kappas are refreshingly honest about their practices, and it's a return to the world above that drives the narrator insane and sends him to the mental asylum.

This novel, the last work by icon of Japanese letters Ryunosuke Akutagawa, is a darkly comic and surreal satire, which challenges all the conventions of so-called polite society.

By: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Introduction by: G.H. Healey
Translated by: Geoffrey Bownas
Imprint: Pushkin Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm,
ISBN: 9781805332480
ISBN 10: 1805332481
Pages: 144
Publication Date: 24 March 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) was one of Japan's leading literary figures in the Taisho period. Regarded as the father of the Japanese short story, he produced over 150 in his short lifetime, including 'Rashomon', which inspired Kurosawa's classic film. Haunted by the fear that he would inherit his mother's madness, Akutagawa suffered from worsening mental health problems towards the end of his life and committed suicide aged 35 by taking an overdose of barbiturates.

Reviews for Kappa

'Enchanting and sometimes terrifying - a certain restrained sorrow, a certain preference for the visual, a certain lightness of touch, seem to me essentially Japanese. Extravagance and horror are in his work, but never in his style, which is always crystal clear' - Jorge Luis Borges 'A novel of exquisite precision' - Spectator