The Box Man (Paperback)

Kobo Abe

ISBN 10: 024145459X / ISBN 13: 9780241454596

Published by Penguin Books Ltd, London, 2020

About this Item

Paperback. Kobo Abe's existential and entertaining masterpiece'This is the record of a box man'The streets of Tokyo have been seeing a strange phenomenon recently - people who have decided to live their lives in a box on the street. Behind their cut-out eyeholes, they sit and watch from behind their four cardboard walls. Our nameless narrator, at first repulsed by the box men, slowly becomes drawn in to the anonymity and voyeuristic life inside a box. As his identity slowly slips away and he becomes obsessed with watching an intriguing young nurse, we too become privy to the schizophrenic and seductive unreality of a box man's life. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780241454596

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Box Man (Paperback)
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, London
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 024145459X
• ISBN 13: 9780241454596
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

'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