Hiroshima City, Hiroshima, Japan. 6 August 1945. The city is on fire, its structures flattened, its citizens vaporised. Gen Nakaoka has just witnessed the deaths of his father, sister, and younger brother as they burned alive, trapped under the ruins of their house. Gen's mother survived and gave birth to a new baby girl, but even the newborn is in danger: Mrs. Nakaoka is starving and unable to produce milk for her baby. It is up to Gen to find rice to feed to his mother. But all around him is death, wrought by the Americans' atomic bomb. Corpses litter the ground, and barely-alive bomb victims with half-melted skin wander the ruins of their city, crying out for water to soothe their scorched throats. In this new hell, how can Gen possibly find hope, let alone a bowl of rice…?

A now-classic manga, Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) is based on author Keiji Nakazawa’s own experiences as a young boy in Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Gen's tale is a deep, harrowing read about the effects of war on a civilian population and what it takes to survive in a world on fire. This edition uses a translation by Project Gen, a team of volunteers formed in the 1970s with the mission of providing a complete English translation of Hadashi no Gen so that a wider audience around the world could read its message.