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Showing 1 - 13 of
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The Ark Sakura
K ob o Abe; Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
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R311
R253
Discovery Miles 2 530
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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The Box Man (Paperback)
K ob o Abe; Translated by E.Dale Saunders
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R303
R245
Discovery Miles 2 450
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'A spellbinder from beginning to end, an edgy masterpiece' Chicago
Sun Times 'This is the record of a box man'. Anonymous and alone,
the box man peeps out of his cut-out eyeholes and watches the world
from behind his four cardboard walls. At first repulsed by the
strange phenomenon of people who have decided to abandon society
and live in boxes on the Tokyo streets, he has found himself drawn
into the anonymity and voyeurism of their life. As he becomes
obsessed with spying on a young nurse, his identity slips away, in
Kobo Abe's eerie, disorienting and seductive masterpiece of unease.
'Funny, sad and destructive ... an invention with its own crazy
pull, it gnaws at the reader ... a stunning addition to the
literature of eccentricity' The New York Times
Dazzlingly original, Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes is one of
the premier Japanese novels in the twentieth century, and this
Penguin Classics edition contains a new introduction by David
Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas. Niki Jumpei, an amateur
entomologist, searches the scorching desert for beetles. As night
falls he is forced to seek shelter in an eerie village, half-buried
by huge sand dunes. He awakes to the terrifying realisation that
the villagers have imprisoned him with a young woman at the bottom
of a vast sand pit. Tricked into slavery and threatened with
starvation if he does not work, Jumpei's only chance is to shovel
the ever-encroaching sand - or face an agonising death. Among the
greatest Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Woman in the
Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential
novel. Kobo Abe (1924-93) was born in Tokyo, grew up in Manchuria,
and returned to Japan in his early twenties. During his life Abe
was considered his country's foremost living novelist. His novels
have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been
bestsellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, The Ark
Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man, and The Ruined Map. If
you liked The Woman in the Dunes, you might enjoy Albert Camus' The
Plague, also available in Penguin Classics. 'A haunting Kafkaesque
nightmare' Time
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The Ark Sakura (Paperback)
K ob o Abe; Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
1
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R282
R230
Discovery Miles 2 300
Save R52 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'One of Japan's most venerated writers' David Mitchell In this
unnerving fable from one of Japan's greatest novelists, a recluse
known as 'Mole' retreats to a vast underground bunker, only to find
that strange guests, booby traps and a giant toilet may prove even
greater obstacles than nuclear disaster. 'As is true of Poe and
Kafka, Abe creates an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading,
on and on' New Yorker 'Abe's depiction of the deadly game of
survival is hilarious but at the same time leaves us with a
chilling sense of apprehension about the brave new world that
awaits us' Los Angeles Times
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The Face of Another (Paperback)
K ob o Abe; Introduction by Kaori Nagai; Translated by E.Dale Saunders
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R338
R274
Discovery Miles 2 740
Save R64 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory
accident - a man who has lost his face and, with it, connection to
other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him. His only entry
back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be
undetectable. But soon he finds that such mask is more than a
disguise: it is an alternate self - a self that is capable of
anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity, and the
social contract, THE FACE OF ANOTHER is an intellectual horror
story of the highest order.
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The Ruined Map (Paperback)
K ob o Abe; Translated by E.Dale Saunders
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R308
R250
Discovery Miles 2 500
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'A brilliant display of pyrotechnics, a compelling tour de force
... by a master jeweller of polished prose' The New York Times A
private detective is hired to find a missing person, but nothing is
normal about this case. Why has the beautiful, alcoholic wife of
the vanished salesman waited over half a year to search for him?
Why are the only clues a photo and a matchbox? As the
investigator's ever-more puzzling hunt takes him into the
labyrinthine depths of the urban underworld, he begins to wonder if
it is in fact he who is lost. An intoxicating blend of noir
thriller and surreal dream, The Ruined Map questions identity
itself. 'An exciting, imaginative and entertaining novel' San
Francisco Chronicle
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.
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Secret Rendezvous (Paperback)
K ob o Abe; Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter
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R305
R247
Discovery Miles 2 470
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'A gorgeously entertaining, provocative book' Chicago Tribune It is
4am when the ambulance comes to take the man's wife away - although
no-one has called it, and there is nothing wrong with her. As he
sets out to find her, he finds himself in the corridors of a vast
underground hospital, where he encounters sinister medics, freakish
sexual experiments and the unmistakable feeling of being watched.
Even when he is suddenly appointed as the hospital's chief of
security, reporting to a man who thinks he is a horse, he will not
give up his search. Secret Rendezvous is a nightmarish satire of
bureaucracy, medicine and modern life. 'Reads as if it were the
collaborative effort of Hieronymus Bosch, Franz Kafka and Mel
Brooks' Chicago Sun Times
Abe Kobo (1924-1993) was one of Japan's greatest postwar writers,
widely recognized for his imaginative science fiction and plays of
the absurd. However, he also wrote theoretical criticism for which
he is lesser known, merging literary, historical, and philosophical
perspectives into keen reflections on the nature of creativity, the
evolution of the human species, and an impressive range of other
subjects. Abe Kobo tackled contemporary social issues and literary
theory with the depth and facility of a visionary thinker.
Featuring twelve essays from his prolific career-including "Poetry
and Poets (Consciousness and the Unconscious)," written in 1944,
and "The Frontier Within, Part II," written in 1969-this anthology
introduces English-speaking readers to Abe Kobo as critic and
intellectual for the first time. Demonstrating the importance of
his theoretical work to a broader understanding of his fiction-and
a richer portrait of Japan's postwar imagination-Richard F.
Calichman provides an incisive introduction to Abe Kobo's
achievements and situates his essays historically and
intellectually.
A classic from the renowned Japanese novelist about isolation and
the threat of a nuclear holocaust, The Ark Sakura is as timely
today as it was at its original publication.
In this Kafkaesque allegorical fantasy, Mole has converted a huge
underground quarry into an "ark" capable of surviving the coming
nuclear holocaust and is now in search of his crew. He falls
victim, however, to the wiles of a con man-cum-insect dealer. In
the surreal drama that ensues, the ark is invaded by a gang of
youths and a sinister group of elderly people called the Broom
Brigade, led by Mole's odious father, while Mole becomes trapped in
the ark's central piece of equipment, a giant toilet powerful
enough to flush almost anything, including chopped-up humans, out
to sea.
In the aftermath of World War II, Kuki Kyuzo, a Japanese youth
raised in the puppet state of Manchuria, struggles to return home
to Japan. What follows is a wild journey involving drugs,
smuggling, chases, and capture. Kyuzo finally makes his way to the
waters off Japan but finds himself unable to disembark. His nation
remains inaccessible to him, and now he questions its very
existence. Beasts Head for Home is an acute novel of identity,
belonging, and the vagaries of human behavior from an exceptional
modern Japanese author.
Three plays by one of contemporary Japan's most prominent
writers -- "Involuntary Homicide, The Green Stockings, The Ghost is
Here" -- translated for this volume reveal Kobo Abe's deep love of
absurdity in the face of universal concerns.
From the acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes comes Secret Rendezvous, the bizarrely erotic and comic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital. From the moment that an ambulance appears in the middle of the night to take his wife, who protests that she is perfectly healthy, her bewildered husband realizes that things are not as they should be. His covert explorations reveal that the enormous hospital she was taken to is home to a network of constant surveillance, outlandish sex experiments, and an array of very odd and even violent characters. Within a few days, though no closer to finding his wife, the unnamed narrator finds himself appointed the hospital’s chief of security, reporting to a man who thinks he’s a horse. With its nightmarish vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is another masterpiece from Japan’s most gifted and original writer of serious fiction.
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