With ebooks increasingly dominating the publishing market, it is a pleasure to hold a printed book so gorgeously designed as this one; the cover alone would make it a welcome addition to any Kenji Nakagami collection.

NAKAGAMI, JAPAN: Buraku and the Writing of Ethnicity, by Anne McKnight. University of Minnesota Press, 2011, 296 pp., $25 (paper)

However, according to online sources, only one of Nakagami's literary works remains in print in 2011 — "The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto" published by Stone Bridge Press. Unfortunately, Andrew Rankin's innovative translation "Snakelust" is only available from secondhand book-sellers.

Strange, then, that two critical surveys of Nakagami's work are available — "Out of the Alleyway: Nakagami Kenji" and the "Poetics of Outcaste Fiction" by Eve Zimmerman, and now "Nakagami, Japan" is the second book.