Goodreads asked Michael Hoffman:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Michael Hoffman Other Worlds is a collection of short fiction set mostly in Japan. At first as I was writing I thought of them as prose haiku. The working title was Haiku Stories. Then I thought, "Not so much haiku as noh..." Yes, I think noh was the basic inspiration. Noh drama... there's nothing quite like it. It has a way of taking you to... well, to other worlds. Other worlds within this one.

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