Filippino is a precocious young painter who impresses the Jewish family commissioning the wedding trunks depicting the story of the Book of Esther.

Finally, the Zengen-ji Amida is reassembled and whole again, and the beauty and power of the statue and its famous half-lidded eyes are unlike anything the workshop has ever experienced, bowing even Master Fujimori.

At the culmination of the ritual, after hours of standing, kneeling, chanting, and praying, the Amida Buddha is revealed to the utter joy of those in participation.

Though its beauty is undeniable, the ritual continues, and the abbot of Zengen-ji is fixated on the mistakes the monks make in their performance of the kaigen shiki.

An unnamed Eastern European is walking through Venice on his way to Scuola Grande di San Rocco wearing a pair of black shoes outfitted with loud heel taps when he notices that a slim, S-shaped man in a pink shirt may be following him.

Now restored and free of lacquer, they open slowly and communicate an infinite sorrow for the world, which the man recognizes as unaffecting the apathetic crowds outside.

He views these masks worn for the Noh play Aoi no Ue as wooden objects to be perfected, not by chance, but by practice and experience.

This chapter begins with Seiobo coming to earth, existing only in the moment, and being called to a performance for the Prince of Chu, King of Mu.

After performing he is surrounded by attendants removing his costume and preparing him for the further ritual of bowing before the crowd, and individually wishing each guest goodbye.

After a week of it whimpering and crying outside his classroom window, he brought it home, to his parents' protestations that dogs don't eat rice.

A master painter, Pietro Perugina, referred to as maestro, with two exceptions, has decided to move his workshop from Florence back to Perugia, Umbria after 15 years away.

The only painter they didn't know previously was a young Raphael, who the maestro took an immense interest in, and treated differently than his loyal assistants of the past decades.

To the confusion and interest of everyone except Raphael, the maestro does not paint St. Jerome's miter, the Madonna's shirt, St. Nicholas of Tolentino's book, or St. Sebastian's cloak until the end.

The narrator then describes the Persian girih and its influence on the stonework throughout the Alhambra, and how its collection of disparate geometrical shapes form a perfect whole that looks either simple or complex based on the viewer's distance.

The first sentence concerns how his coworkers view Monsieur Chaivagne, a 32-year veteran Louvre museum guard who watches the Venus de Milo every day.

While giving the statue's history, Chaivagne tries to impress the importance of Praxiteles, the original sculptor, whose work is copied into the Venus de Milo.

Chaivagne's worries disappear overnight in the fourth sentence, and he resumes his post in the corner of the room with the Venus, unmoving like the statue itself.

This chapter, with a few exceptions concerning audience reaction, is told from the point of view of an unnamed architect giving a lecture called "A Century and a Half of Heaven" to six old women and two old men at a village library.

He describes how he first fell in love with Baroque music: "Si Piangete Pupille Dolente" by Caldara was playing over a coworker's radio.

His bombastic style mesmerizes and exhausts the curious audience as he vacillates between obscure reviews of individual pieces to grand statements about Bach and St. Matthew's Passion.

Oswald Kienzl, a Swiss landscape painter, is standing in line for a train ticket to visit his lover Valentine the morning after learning of the death of his ex-lover and model Augustine.

They are bussed over a bumpy trail and arrive to an enormous wooden stage built in the middle of the woods, at the center of which is two hinoki trees.

Again they drive to a remote area where they are met by an officious young man named Iida, who tries very hard to impress the importance of his station and what they will witness onto them.

During the editing process, the work finally begins to cohere, and Ze'ami completes the Kintoosho, which shows his religious belief through the story of his exile.

A short chapter describing how the buried sculptures of the Shang dynasty represent and guard death in a way the original artists could never have predicted.

For example, chapter 2 begins with a complete blank crossword puzzle in Italian, followed by a description of a website update by an Australian skin care company.

Jason Farago wrote for NPR in 2013: "The breadth of material these stories cover is breathtaking, but Krasznahorkai wears his erudition lightly.

On the contrary: it places upon us readers the same demands of all great art, and allows us to grasp a vision of painstaking beauty if we can slow ourselves down to savor it.

"[4] The same year, Scott Esposito reviewed the book in The Washington Post: "With Seiobo, we see the moody darkness of Krasznahorkai’s early novels becoming revitalized by the balm of great art.

Esposito continued: "[Krasznahorkai] also shows his mastery of narrative technique with stories that range from mad monologues to quiet ruminations, nimble use of the detached third person and even an essayistic chapter on the Alhambra palace in Spain — each piece wholly self-enclosed and satisfying on its own terms.