โ Scribed by Abe, Kobo
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis*,* this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accidenta man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him.
His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate selfa self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity and the social contract,* *The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
"A fascinating book.... The world of Kobo Abe is one in which intellectual concepts have the emotional impact and motivating power of psychotic compulsions."Newsweek
"A major novel... Since The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe's stock as a novelist has been very high. The Face of Another raises it still more."*The Christian Science Monitor
*"Probes the edges of a waking nightmare....The central, shaping metaphor of face and facelessness is brilliant, and Abe's relentless pursuit of its every implication is powerful."*The Saturday Review*
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Japanese
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
A man scarred in a laboratory accident fahions a mask to cover his disfigured face, only to find his masked self taking on a frightening new personality of its own.
A man scarred in a laboratory accident fahions a mask to cover his disfigured face, only to find his masked self taking on a frightening new personality of its own.
A man scarred in a laboratory accident fahions a mask to cover his disfigured face, only to find his masked self taking on a frightening new personality of its own.
Like an elegantly chilling postscript to **The Metamorphosis** _,_ this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident--a man who has lost his