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Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924 and grew up in Mukden, Manchuria, during World War II. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Considered one of Japan's foremost novelists, his most famous works include The Face of Another (1964), The Box Man (1973), Secret Rendezvous (1977), and The Ark Sakura (1984). All of Abe's books have been bestsellers in Japan and he was the recipient of numerous literary awards and prizes, including the Yomiuri Prize for The Woman in the Dunes in 1962. He collaborated with director Hiroshi Teshigahara on film adaptations of four of his novels--including The Woman in the Dunes --and was also widely known as a dramatist. He died in 1993.
Devious, addictive. . . . Never less than compulsive. . . . Abe is an accomplished stylist. --David Mitchell Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states. --The New York Times Book Review As is true of Poe and Kafka . . . Abe creates on the page an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading, on and on. --The New Yorker Devious, addictive. . . . Never less than compulsive. . . . Abe is an accomplished stylist. David Mitchell Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states. The New York Times Book Review As is true of Poe and Kafka . . . Abe creates on the page an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading, on and on. The New Yorker Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states. He also presents...everyday existence in a sand pit with such compelling realism that these passages serve both to heighten the credibility of the bizarre plot and subtly increase the interior tensions of the novel. -- The New York Times Book Review Some of Kobo Abe's readers will recall Kafka's manipulation of a nightmarish tyranny of the unknown, others Beckett's selection of sites like the sand pit...as a symbol of the undignified human predicament. -- Saturday Review Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states. He also presents...everyday existence in a sand pit with such compelling realism that these passages serve both to heighten the credibility of the bizarre plot and subtly increase the interior tensions of the novel. -- The New York Times Book Review Some of Kobo Abe's readers will recall Kafka's manipulation of a nightmarish tyranny of the unknown, others Beckett's selection of sites like the sand pit...as a symbol of the undignified human predicament. -- Saturday Review
