![]() Having been raised outside of the main Japanese culture, Abe’s writings and interests differed from those of many of his compatriots. Many of these tales came from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe but Abe, even at an early age, created stories of his own. During his childhood, most of which was spent in the Manchurian city of Mukden, Abe entertained himself and his friends by reciting stories. He followed in his father’s footsteps to a certain extent, gaining a degree in medicine but quickly decided that he did not want to become a doctor. Kobo Abe, one of Japan’s greatest writers, was born on March 7, 1924, in Tokyo. As Wimal Dissanayake, writing for Literary Relations, East and West: Selected Essays put it: “What Kobo Abe has sought to do is to remove his protagonist from his cultural environment and to probe deeper and deeper into his own psyche as a way of attaining his authentic selfhood.” The story of a journey of inner discovery during which the protagonist remembers what it means to be human in a modern society that sometimes seems to have forgotten. His imprisonment in a hole in the sand dunes tempers his psyche, however, and in the end he comes to an awakening in which he grasps a better understanding of his basic psychological makeup. He often describes himself and his actions as if he were a detached observer of his own actions. The story begins with a character, Niki Jumpei, who seems all but totally unaware of who he really is. And long since its publication, The Woman in the Dunes, which in 1960 won the Yomiuri Prize for literature, continues to retain its classification of being not only the best of Abe’s extensive life work, but also one of the classic examples of modern Japanese fiction. After the popular success of this novel, Abe’s works became the most often translated fiction of Japanese literature. The Woman in the Dunes and the subsequent movie based on the novel catapulted Abe into the international realm. His statement is fascinating, but not very glorifying, as the protagonist becomes trapped in a world of ceaseless and mindless labor. ![]() With this novel, one of Abe’s more popular works, Abe takes the reader into a very strange and isolated world in order to make a statement about the condition of modern civilization. Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes is a prime example. Kobo Abe, one of Japan’s most celebrated and frequently translated authors and playwrights, is often compared to the Czech writer, Franz Kafka, because both writers created novels that were built upon nightmarish allegories. ![]() The Nakano Thrift Shop RM57.1962 Introduction Author Biography Plot Summary Characters Themes Style Historical Context Critical Overview Criticism Further Reading Introduction.Among the greatest Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Woman in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. Tricked into slavery and threatened with starvation if he does not work, Jumpei’s only chance is to shovel the ever-encroaching sand – or face an agonising death. He awakes to the terrifying realisation that the villagers have imprisoned him with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit. As night falls he is forced to seek shelter in an eerie village, half-buried by huge sand dunes. Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist, searches the scorching desert for beetles. Dazzlingly original, Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes is one of the premier Japanese novels in the twentieth century, and this Penguin Classics edition contains a new introduction by David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas.
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