Lightning in the Void

Creative Nonfiction. Cultural Writing. Carroll describes his first novel as an "exploration of Buddhist themes against the backdrop of the Musashi legend." The book introduces the reader to various elements of a society which was as violent and as vital as Italy during the Renaissance. Miyamoto Musashi has been well known from the kabuki stage and Japan's equivalent of pulp fiction; in a meticulously researched work, Carroll has used alternative sources and woven them into a fictional recreation of Musashi's career from his childhood to his death. Carroll has also provided a realistic view of Japan during its turbulent transition from centuries of civil war and anarchy to the stable and peaceful, albeit dictatorial, rule of the Tokugawa shoguns.