Young Elisha Ambrose's life is mired in the mundane until he meets a dealer in rare books, who shows him his greatest prize, a rare medieval Japanese book. Elisha befriends the old bookseller so he can read from the book and imbibe the beauty of its images. He quickly becomes fixated on it, and his fixation hurls him into a maelstrom of obsession and delusion. He risks everything he thinks he holds dear in this world as he becomes possessed with irresistible and unexplainable impulses.
Two parallel stories, the one of the young man's personal history, and the one told in the book seem to intertwine. Some of the extraordinary events and personages in the book - which is a tale of Kanaye, a vain ambitious young man and aspirant samurai who dreams of war, glory, and perfect love - converge with those of the young man's existence.
Elisha's life had been unexciting until he came across that precious book. Now it has becomes an agonizing ordeal, a terrifying over-excitement of all his senses, peopled with characters he is convinced are out to frustrate his aspirations. Elisha yields to the outlandish delusions that possess him as he seems bent on acting out passages from the book. He will go to any lengths to covet the book, because it has become a compulsion not only to read it but to posses it entirely.
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