Bibliograph

The box man, A novel., Kobo Abe

Type

Label

The box man, A novel., Kobo Abe

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Intended audience

950, Lexile

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

The box man

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

resource.readingGradeLevel

Text Difficulty 5 - Text Difficulty 6

Responsibility statement

Kobo Abe

Series statement

Vintage International

Sub title

A novel.

Summary

Kobo Abe, the internationally acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes , combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett. In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he describes the world outside as he sees or perhaps imagines it, a tenuous reality that seems to include a mysterious rifleman determined to shoot him, a seductive young nurse, and a doctor who wants to become a box man himself. The Box Man is a marvel of sheer originality and a bizarrely fascinating fable about the very nature of identity. Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders

Classification

Creator