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

The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident - a man who has lost his face and, with it, connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him. His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self - a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity, and the social contract, THE FACE OF ANOTHER is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.