The Year of the Green Snake: The Year of Serendipity is one of the post-9/11 genre stories, based on the author"s personal encounters with Japan (where one would expect nothing but beauty, stern elegance, and harmony) and the people he has met, both Japanese and foreigners, in the 1990s, only slightly shifted in time. Tom, the main character of the book, is an American English teacher living in Osaka; infuriated by the September 11 terrorist attacks on his homeland and inspired by Yukio Mishima"s ghost, he dreams of exacting revenge on the local Muslims by writing an inflammatory book but, rejected by shy Japanese publishers, decides to deliver his vengeance in the traditional, multicultural, and oh-so-Japanese style. In short, the novel is an obsessive "writing about writing" story about what alcohol, confusion, and emotions out of control can do to a fragile psyche.