The dividing line between the real and the unreal, between truth and fiction began to blur and this, of course, became grist for further fictions. At the age of 35, Akutagawa died from an overdose of his insomnia medicine.

You can see why a singular talent such as Peace would be attracted to this material. Peace, originally from Yorkshire, is a long-time resident of Japan and author of three crime novels set in post-war Tokyo. He is also the author of two biographical novels about the brilliant, eccentric English football managers Brian Clough and Bill Shankly, and this, his third biographical novel, shares unlikely thematic resonances with those two very English books.

Shankly, Clough and Akutagawa are single-minded in their pursuit of glory, they are all burdened with a vision that those around them cannot always see, they are all accused of arrogance and at the end, madness and melancholy begin to creep into all their stories.

Akutagawa is Patient X, a man intoxicated with words. Peace demonstrates this by blurring fiction and biography to give us stories of love, loss, religious allegory, fairytales, biographical vignettes and fables that map the territory between insanity, truth and lies.

My favourite story in the novel is recounted by Akutagawa's friend Soseki, who tells him the strange saga of his visit to England (Japan's lost twin island on the other side of the world) where, as a lonely student, he is befriended by a crazy artist (possibly Walter Sickert), who is almost certainly Jack The Ripper.

Peace's prose is always changing and this time there is a freer, more lyrical approach to the work and less use of his trademark leitmotif and repetition. But Patient X is still an ambitious, sometimes difficult book that rides the line between Peace's personal mythology and Akutagawa's often occult visions.

It is further proof, if proof were needed, that David Peace is one of Britain's (and the world's) most gifted and original novelists.