<p><span>The sound of a trumpet across a Japanese mountain valley leads a young man to befriend a mysterious stranger. During repeated visits to the cave where the stranger has set up home, the young man learns about his past – in the mines, villages and ports of the region. The stranger’s hilarious, bawdy and touching narratives captivate the young man, but he begins to doubt their veracity. Finally, as the young man decides his own fate, the full truth about the stranger is revealed in a remarkable twist.</span></p><p><span>‘Tales from a Mountain Cave’ is a translation of Hisashi Inoue’s very popular ‘Shinshaku Tono Monogatari’ (??????) set in the Kamaishi area of Iwate Prefecture, Northeast Japan. Kamaishi was devastated by the tsunami of March 2011. All royalties on sales of the book are donated to post-tsunami community support projects. It features ‘House up the River’, commended in the 2013 British Comparative Literature Association John Dryden Translation Competition.</span></p>