The Box Man
A Novel
Published on 14. December 2011
192 pages
978-0-307-81369-5 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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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Person
Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924, grew up in Manchuria, and returned to Japan in his early twenties. In 1948 he receiveved a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Before his death in 1993, Abe was considered his country's foremost living novelist, and was also widely known as a dramatist. His novels have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been bestsellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, Kangaroo Notebook, The Ark Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man, and Secret Rendezvous.
Content
- Intro
- About the Author
- Other Books by This Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- My Case
- Instructions for Making a Box
- An Example: The Case of A
- A Safety Device . Just in Case
- Two or Three Additions Concerning the Photographic Evidence Attached to the Inner Cover
- Then I Dozed Off a Number of Times
- The Promise is Fulfilled, and a Letter with Fifty Thousand Yen Covering the Cost of the Box was Dropped from the Top of the Bridge. This was Barely Five Minutes Ago. I Attach the Letter Herewith
- In a Mirror
- Three-and-a-Half-Page Insert on Different Paper
- In Which It Is a Question of the Sullen Relationship Between the I Who Am Writing and the I Who Am Being Written About
- The Case of C
- The Executioner Bears No Crime
- Another Insertion . the Last
- The Case of D
- In His Dream the Box Man Takes His Box Off. Is This the Dream He Had Before He Began Living in a Box or Is It the Dream of His Life After He Left It .?
- Five Minutes to Curtain Time
- Whereupon the Play Came to an End Without Even the Bell Ringing for the Curtain
