Into the Forbidden Zone: A Trip Through Hell and High Water in Post-Earthquake Japan

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. He 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.