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The Box Man

The Box Man

Literary FictionMagical Realism
Pages
160
Published
2020
Language
English

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

Genres

Literary Fiction Magical Realism

About the author

A
Abe Kōbō

Kōbō Abe (安部 公房) is the pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe (安部 公房). Abe was born in Kita, Tokyo, the son of a physician who taught medicine. He was raised in Mukden, Manchuria. He returned to Japan in 1941, and in 1943 he went to Tokyo Imperial University, where he earned a medical degree but he failed his medical exam and was forbidden from practicing. He returned to Manchuria as an author. In 1947, he self-published his first book, Mumei-shishū ("Poems of an unknown poet"). His wrote avant-gard...