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.
- ISBN10 0375726519
- ISBN13 9780375726514
- Publish Date 10 July 2001 (first published 12 January 1981)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher Random House USA Inc
- Imprint Vintage Books
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 192
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780375726514