Five stories of desire and discovery set in 1970s Japan, from weird fiction's most influential pioneer - Angela Carter.

An Englishwoman muses on her affair with a younger Japanese man. A spurned lover seeks intimacy in another chance encounter. A boy stumbles upon a mirror world while walking in the woods.

In five mesmerising, fantastical tales of 1970s Japan, Angela Carter explores what it means to arrive in a world different from one’s own, and to transform profoundly – sometimes terrifyingly – in the process.

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days