by Kōbō Abe
One thing alone is certain and that is that even she, who has at present vanished, is hiding somewhere in this labyrinth. She’s not necessarily running away, she just can’t find where I am. At this point I can speak out clearly with assurance. I have no regret. The clues are numerous, and it is reasonable that the truth should exist in proportion to their number.
I hear the siren of an approaching ambulance.
ALSO BY KOBO ABE
“As is true of Poe and Kafka—two writers whose influence does seem apparent—Abe creates on the page an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading, on and on.”
—The New Yorker
KANGAROO NOTEBOOK
The nameless narrator of Kangaroo Notebook wakes one morning to discover that his legs are growing radish sprouts, an ailment that repulses his doctor but provides the patient with the unusual ability to snack on himself. Thus begins Kobo Abe’s strange and wonderful novel, the last to be completed before he died in 1993. In short order, the unraveling protagonist finds himself hurtling in a hospital bed to the very shores of hell. Only Abe could have assembled these oddities into a coherent novel, one imbued with unexpected meaning.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-74663-3
THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES
One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Woman in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and an amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-73378-7
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD
by Kazuo Ishiguro
In the face of the misery he saw in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he envisioned a strong and powerful Japan of the future, and put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the devastation of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world” offer him both escape and redemption.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-72266-1
THE SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN
by Yasunari Kawabata
By day Ogata Shingo is troubled by small failures of memory. At night he hears a distant rumble from the nearby mountain, a sound he associates with death. In between are the relationships that were once the foundation of Shingo’s life: with his disappointing wife, his philandering son, and his daughter-in-law Kikuko, who instills in him both pity and uneasy stirrings. Out of this translucent web of tenuous attachments, Yasunari Kawabata creates an enormously affecting novel.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-76264-7
THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA
by Yukio Mishima
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea tells of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call “objectivity.” When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship’s officer, the boys initially idealize the man; but soon they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-75015-0
HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND
AND THE END OF THE WORLD
by Haruki Murakami
In this hyperkinetic and relentlessly inventive novel, Haruki Murakami hurtles into the consciousness of the West. He draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a hilarious yet deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-74346-4
THE KEY
By Junichiro Tanizaki
Scintillating, elegant, and darkly comic, The Key is the story of a dying marriage, told in the form of parallel diaries. After nearly thirty years of marriage, a middle-aged professor frenziedly strives for new heights of pleasure with his repressed, dissatisfied wife. During the day, they record their adventures of the previous night. When they begin to suspect each other of peeping into their respective diaries, it becomes unclear whether each spouse’s confessions might not be intended for the other’s eyes.
Fiction/Literature/0-679-73023-0
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
Available at your local bookstore, or call toll-free to order:
1-800-793-2665 (credit cards only).
