安部公房

Kobo Abe

Horribly disfigured in an accidental lab explosion and rejected by and alienated from the rest of society, a scientist develops a perfect mask, one that provides a new identity that even his wife cannot penetrate. Reprint.

The Face of Another

Kōbō Abe

David

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.

The Woman in the Dunes

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Женщина в песках

As a jump-shoe salesman searches for his wife in a sinister underground hospital, his fascination with the hospital's strange inhabitants, including a girl whose bones are gradually liquefying, causes him to barely notice his wife's unspeakable circumstances. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Secret Rendezvous

Transl. from the Japanese original Bō ni natta otoko

Three Related Plays

The Man who Turned Into a Stick

密会

本书是作者从全新的角度来探讨现代人婚外情这一社会现象的巨作.

砂女

芥川文學獎得主 安部公房 日本卡夫卡 日本前衛文學代表 套上紙箱之後 人不人箱不箱的怪物 都市流浪者的窺視實驗 頭上套著紙箱，徘徊都市的箱男，從窺窗凝視什麼呢？ 捨棄一切歸屬，放棄存在的證明，他藉此尋求什麼？又得到了什麼？ 與假箱男錯綜複雜的關係，與護士小姐絕望的愛。 一連串耀眼的想像以及令人目眩神迷的轉換場景。 在設下無數機關幻惑讀者的同時娓娓道來的迷宮。 充滿實驗性的長篇小說。

箱男

Box Man, The

Kobo Abe's The Face of Another is a psychological study in which the moment-to-moment eventfulness makes much of it read like melodrama. The protagonist is a scientist whose face is disfigured in a laboratory explosion. He feels cut off from the human community, alienated. When even his wife repulses him as he tries to make love to her, he resolves to create a mask so perfect as to be unrecognisable. He then realises that he can acquire a new personality to go with the new face. Is this new personality his inner self, the invisible man? Or is this only a masquerade? The scientist conceives of the masked person as an adventurer and seducer, and he begins to act out the role. He tests the mask in many situations, then seduces his wife -with consequences astonishing to both him and the reader.

他人の顔

Face of Another, The

A young entomologist, trapped in a sandpit with an attractive widow, finds he is a prisoner.

An absurdist drama about the gradual destruction of the individual. A family enters the apartment of a young man and announces that they will save him from his loneliness by living with him. Slowly, they destroy everything, in the cheerful psychotic name of "brotherly love".

安部公房

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