Just weeks after multiple disasters struck Japan, National Book Award winner William T. Vollmann ventures into the nuclear hot zone, outfitted only with rubber kitchen gloves, a cloth facemask, and a capricious radiation detector. In this Byliner Original from the digital publisher Byliner, Vollmann emerges with a haunting report on daily life in a now-ravaged Japan-a country he has known and loved for many years. And in the cities and towns hit hardest by the earthquake, tsunami, and radioactive contamination, Vollmann finds troubling omens of a future heading toward us all.ABOUT THE AUTHORWilliam T. Vollman is the author of nine novels, including "Europe Central," winner of the National Book Award. He has also written three collections of stories, a memoir, and five works of nonfiction, including, most recently, "Imperial" and "Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement, and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater." His epic treatise on violence, "Rising Up and Rising Down," was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN Center USA West Award, and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.