Deserter

Deserter collects twelve of Junji Ito's earliest horror stories, written between 1987 and 1990 at the outset of his career. The title story follows a family who hides a WWII army deserter for eight years after the war's end, sustaining him inside a false reality where the fighting never stopped. Other stories in the volume include "Bio House," "Face Thief," "Where the Sandman Lives," "The Devil's Logic," "The Long Hair in the Attic," "Scripted Love," "The Reanimator's Sword," "A Father's Love," "Unendurable Labyrinth," "Village of the Siren," and "Bullied" — ranging from a pair of look-alike girls who aren't twins to a man who refuses to sleep for fear of his dreamworld counterpart taking over his body. As an early-career anthology, the collection shows the seeds of the visual and narrative style Ito would refine in his later work.