One morning, a woman treads on a snake. She comes home that evening and realises the snake has moved into her house and is saying she is her mother. So begins the story of a woman trying to live with a snake, with herself – or perhaps with something else altogether. This volume includes the three stories ‘Tread on a Snake’, ‘Missing’ and ‘Record of a Night Too Brief’ which together won the Akitagawa Prize in 1996.