These three stories illustrate Inoue's versatility, his mastery of detail and his control of narrative structure. Inoue presents the tale as mystery and solution, the tale as psychoanalytic exploration…, the tale as emblematic social history."
—Arizona Quarterly

In The Counterfeiter, a writer is commissioned to write the biography of a famous painter but becomes fascinated by a man who produced forgeries of the artist's work. Obasute concerns a man's obsession with a legend of old women being taken to a mountain and abandoned, and his interpretation of the actions of members of his family in light of this legend. The Full Moon is a story of company politics, particularly the rise and fall of firm's president, told largely through incidents at annual company parties.

Yasushi Inoue was born in 1907. He rose quickly to become one of Japan's most important contemporary writers, winning almost every major Japanese literary prize. Inoue died in 1991.