Shiori knows that she was destined to sing - even if she is completely tone-deaf. Forced to give up her dream of becoming a travelling troubadour, she moves to Tokyo at eighteen to forge a career in music, whatever the cost.But she quickly becomes isolated in this vast new city, and even the people she calls friends take advantage of her naivety. Then one day, she is entrusted with a secret of enormous power. If she chooses to, she can take revenge on the world.Shot through with dark irony and a playful sense of the absurd, Mysterious Setting is a propulsive and gloriously strange story of innocence and experience.

Kazushige Abe is one of Japan's pre-eminent contemporary writers. A graduate of the Japanese Institute of the Moving Image in Tokyo, he worked as an assistant director before turning his hand to writing. Since winning the Gunzo New Writers' Prize for his first novel, Amerika no yoru, he has been awarded several of Japan's most prestigious literary prizes, including the Sei Ito Award, the Mainichi Culture Award, the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize.