The Box Man: A Novel
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Product Description
Product Description
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.
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you liked Samuel Beckett's book "Watt", then you'll love 'The Box Man'. 'The Box Man' is a psychotic tale of disassociation in a world that echoes that of the medical nightmares in William S. Burrough's 'Blade Runner: A Movie'.
You really don't want to know more about 'The Box Man' at this moment, deciding what is going on is one of the main pleasures of reading the book, Abe's wacked style is another.
I'd never read any of Kobo Abe's work before and found 'The Box Man' fascinatingly disturbed. If you want it weird, get this book. I'm definitely going to read more of his works.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My God what a tough book! I can’t remember when I last struggled with a piece of literature so much. Characters? Narrative? Plot? Forget about it – The Box Man is truly startling and frustrating story about identity.
Just when you think you know what is going on Abe sweeps the rug out from underneath your feet. Whole scenes are dismissed as imaginary and the identity The Box Man shifts and eludes. This made my head spin – but it did make me think, something that can’t be said for a majority of books.
A man walking around with a box over himself and his obsession with a nurse with nudist-tendencies is about as stable a explanation to the plot as I can give you. Abe has given us a book full of answers, but with no questions. I believe it is up to the reader to draw their own conclusions on what really happens.
Do you fancy a challenge? A big challenge? Then this is the book for you.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What a crazy, crazy read. If you ever want a book that takes you out of your comfort zone, this is it.
It's incredibly hard to rate a book such as this that defies any kind of convention, although this is one of the reasons I have rated this book so highly.
The truly skillful aspect of the writing is the way the author combines literary devices (some of the metaphors could only have been conjured up after a binge session of some kind of medieval cough syrup) in a seemingly random way but that somehow work to create a novel that keeps you thinking about it whenever you aren't reading it. If you are a member of the human race, don't expect to get your head around this without the use of the mind of Kobo Abe.
It's incredibly hard to rate a book such as this that defies any kind of convention, although this is one of the reasons I have rated this book so highly.
The truly skillful aspect of the writing is the way the author combines literary devices (some of the metaphors could only have been conjured up after a binge session of some kind of medieval cough syrup) in a seemingly random way but that somehow work to create a novel that keeps you thinking about it whenever you aren't reading it. If you are a member of the human race, don't expect to get your head around this without the use of the mind of Kobo Abe.
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