The Woman in the Dunes
by Kobo Abe
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kobo AbeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1991-04-16
ISBN: 0679733787
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of The Woman in the Dunes
Book Review: As great as Kafka's The Castle
Summary: 5 Stars
A masterpiece of existentialist fantasy, greatly influenced by Kafka, but no less original in its ability to make the reader painfully aware of the kind imprisonment that we all face, as the tiny grains of life's obligations result in a deluge of sand.
Summary of The Woman in the Dunes
One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Women in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. 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, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village."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
This beautiful novel by one of Japan's most important writers is also one of the most strangely terrifying and memorable books you'll ever read. The Woman in the Dunes is the story of an amateur entomologist who wanders alone into a remote seaside village in pursuit of a rare beetle he wants to add to his collection. But the townspeople take him prisoner. They lower him into the sand-pit home of a young widow, a pariah in the poor community, who the villagers have condemned to a life of shoveling back the ever-encroaching dunes that threaten to bury the town. An amazing book.
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