It is August of 1945. An American submarine, silent and hidden, moves toward the darkened coast of an island. Thus begins a book like no other book: partly an adventure-thriller set in wartime Japan, partly a glimpse into a primitive world in which the Ainu who still live in small settle ments on Hokkaido are turned into a race of occult artificers, half real and half magic. Interwoven into this is what is surely one of the strangest sexual encounters in modern litera ture. In spite of the electric air of calmness in which everything hap pens, the suspense builds page by page. When the climax finally comes, it is a double one, as unexpected as it is inevitable. Yukiko is one of the most brilliant creations of the acclaimed American writer MacDonald Harris. AUTHOR: MacDonald Harris was the pseudonym of Donald Heiney. He wrote 16 novels and 1 book on sailing (he was in the US Navy during WW2) and lived for most of his life in Newport, California. In 1982 he received a literature award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his entire body of work. He died in 1993 aged 71.