Seven punky and pitch-black stories offer English-language readers an overdue introduction to Izumi Suzuki, a cult figure in Japanese literature. The fissures in a queer matriarchal utopia are exposed when a boy - a creature usually contained in ghettoised isolation - appears beneath young Yūko's window; an extreme government initiative curbing overpopulation prompts a woman to re-evaluate her friendships; the last family in a desolate city learns...