Out of the Alleyway: Nakagami Kenji and the Poetics of Outcaste Fiction. By Eve Zimmerman. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. x, 263 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

Out of the Alleyway tells a story about the man Nakagami Kenji and, from that biographical perspective, reads him as an author. In other words, its primary i...