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The Woman in the Dunes

Part of Vintage International

Author Kobo Abe
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Paperback
$17.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
5.16"W x 8.04"H x 0.51"D  
On sale Apr 16, 1991 | 256 Pages | 978-0-679-73378-2
| Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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One of the premier Japanese novels of the 20th 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 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. Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.

"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 increases the interior tensions of the novel." —The New York Times Book Review

“One of the maddest books I’ve ever loved.” —Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924 and grew up in Mukden, Manchuria, during World War II. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Considered one of Japan’s foremost novelists, his most famous works include The Face of Another (1964), The Box Man (1973), Secret Rendezvous (1977), and The Ark Sakura (1984). All of Abe’s books have been bestsellers in Japan and he was the recipient of numerous literary awards and prizes, including the Yomiuri Prize for The Woman in the Dunes in 1962. He collaborated with director Hiroshi Teshigahara on film adaptations of four of his novels—including The Woman in the Dunes—and was also widely known as a dramatist. He died in 1993. View titles by Kobo Abe
“Devious, addictive. . . . Never less than compulsive. . . . Abe is an accomplished stylist.”
—David Mitchell
 
“Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states.”
—The New York Times Book Review
 
“As is true of Poe and Kafka . . . Abe creates on the page an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading, on and on.”
—The New Yorker

About

One of the premier Japanese novels of the 20th 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 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. Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders.

"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 increases the interior tensions of the novel." —The New York Times Book Review

“One of the maddest books I’ve ever loved.” —Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Author

Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924 and grew up in Mukden, Manchuria, during World War II. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Considered one of Japan’s foremost novelists, his most famous works include The Face of Another (1964), The Box Man (1973), Secret Rendezvous (1977), and The Ark Sakura (1984). All of Abe’s books have been bestsellers in Japan and he was the recipient of numerous literary awards and prizes, including the Yomiuri Prize for The Woman in the Dunes in 1962. He collaborated with director Hiroshi Teshigahara on film adaptations of four of his novels—including The Woman in the Dunes—and was also widely known as a dramatist. He died in 1993. View titles by Kobo Abe

Praise

“Devious, addictive. . . . Never less than compulsive. . . . Abe is an accomplished stylist.”
—David Mitchell
 
“Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states.”
—The New York Times Book Review
 
“As is true of Poe and Kafka . . . Abe creates on the page an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading, on and on.”
—The New Yorker

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