Defying the commonly held perceptions of time and space, and escaping any easy classifications, Yasutaka Tsutsui’s stories centre on the folly of human desire. Most of his characters suffer awful fates as a result of their own foolishness, which usually takes the form of greed, lust or vanity. With influences as diverse as Darwin, Freud and the Marx Brothers, his writing displays a mixture of pathos, slapstick and psychological insight, shot through with bolts of Kafkaesque inventiveness.

Tsutsui’s quirky imagination, and his ability to construct new and striking realities, threaded with a dark-edged, menacing humour, make him a truly unique literary voice, and ensure that Salmonella Men on Planet Porno is hard to put down and impossible to forget.