From Kur?zu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in small seashells, ferns, whirlpools in water, whirlwinds in air. And in large the spiral marks on people’s bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi’s father, the voice from the cochlea in your inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kur?zu-cho are pulled ever deeper, as if into a whirlpool from which there is no return...