The Box Man (English and Japanese Edition)

Kobo Abe

ISBN 10: 0394491068 / ISBN 13: 9780394491066

Published by Knopf, 1974

About this Item

First American edition stated. 8vo in 1/4 buff cloth on olive paper, spine title in gilt, spine and cover devices in blue. Very modest shelf wear, remainder mark on the bottom edge. The dustjacket is not price-clipped, very light rubbing at the spine ends and the bottom edges of the front and rear panels, the front flap is creased, the rear flap was previously loosely attached to the free endpaper.

Seller Inventory # 299278

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Box Man (English and Japanese Edition)
• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication Date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394491068
• ISBN 13: 9780394491066
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Thus.
• Printing: First Thus
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Modern First Editions

About this title

Synopsis

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.

Review

The nature of identity itself is the ostensible subject of this bizarrely fascinating existential novel from the great Japanese fiction writer and dramatist Kobo Abe. In the story, a man decides to give up the self that he has been all his life to attain a state of blissful anonymity. He leaves his world behind and moves onto the streets of Tokyo. He puts a large box over his head, cuts a hole for his eyes. It is as strange as it sounds, but Abe's light touch and narrative innovation makes it compelling.