The Image and the Likeness

In 1965 Shanghai, four Western scientists arrive under the guise of studying primitive man, but their actual mission is to infiltrate New Buddhism, a nationalist religious movement sweeping across post-war Asia, one that may harbor communist sympathies. What they find shatters their rationalist frameworks: Kazu Takahashi, a colossal being rising from the ashes of Hiroshima, claimed as the reincarnation of Buddha by millions of followers. As the anthropologists and zoologist dig deeper, they confront not merely a theological phenomenon but a living embodiment of trauma, faith, and power in the atomic age. The novel blends Cold War espionage, anthropological intrigue, and cosmic horror into something genuinely unsettling. This is science fiction that asks what happens when ancient spiritual promises collide with modern devastation, when the divine wears the face of nuclear annihilation. For readers who crave speculative fiction that thinks big and disturbs.