The Woman in the Dunes - Softcover

Abe, Kobo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394718143 ISBN 13: 9780394718149

Publisher: Vintage, 1972

Synopsis

One of the premier Japanese novels in the twentieth century, "The Woman In The Dunes" combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where they are pressed into shovelling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village.

About this title

Review:

This beautiful novel by one of Japan's most important writers is also one of the most strangely terrifying and memorable books you'll ever read. The Woman in the Dunes is the story of an amateur entomologist who wanders alone into a remote seaside village in pursuit of a rare beetle he wants to add to his collection. But the townspeople take him prisoner. They lower him into the sand-pit home of a young widow, a pariah in the poor community, who the villagers have condemned to a life of shoveling back the ever-encroaching dunes that threaten to bury the town. An amazing book.

From the Back Cover:

"Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states. He also presents...everyday existence in a sand pit with such compelling realism that these passages serve both to heighten the credibility of the bizarre plot and subtly increase the interior tensions of the novel."

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Some of Kobo Abe's readers will recall Kafka's manipulation of a nightmarish tyranny of the unknown, others Beckett's selection of sites like the sand pit...as a symbol of the undignified human predicament." -- Saturday Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1972
• ISBN 10: 0394718143
• ISBN 13: 9780394718149
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 239