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Jul 10, 2001 | ISBN 9780375726514 Buy
Dec 14, 2011 | ISBN 9780307813695 Buy
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Jul 10, 2001 | ISBN 9780375726514
Dec 14, 2011 | ISBN 9780307813695
Kobo Abe, the internationally acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes, combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett.In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity.Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.
Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924 and grew up in Mukden, Manchuria, during World War II. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Considered one of Japan’s foremost novelists, his… More about Kobo Abe
“A spellbinder from beginnning to end, an edgy masterpiece.”–Chicago Sun-Times“A stunning addition to the literature of eccentricity…an ontological thriller.”–The New York Times“Brilliant…. Like Kafka’s, Abe’s work reveals an astonishing ability to create dreamlike events."–Chicago Tribune
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