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The back cover of the Vintage edition of Kobo Abe's The Woman in the Dunes calls it "one of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century." This may well be true--if an exemplar of mid-20th century literature is, by definition, high postmodern. This is a high postmodern novel; it does that shtick well, and it is limited by that shtick's limitations.
The story concerns a man (whose name is Junpei, but that scarcely matters), who goes on vacation to the seaside and ends up imprisoned in a remote village half-buried by sand dunes, where the residents must spend every night shoveling sand to prevent the destruction of their houses.
There is also a woman (nameless), the owner of the house where he's imprisoned. However, be forewarned that the book's title smacks of marketing ploy. The book is not, in fact, about this "woman in the dunes," neither as subject nor as primary object. The book is about the relationship between the man and the sand (and the various existential questions the sand represents), and the woman is really just one aspect, albeit a significant one, of life amid the sand.
( No particular spoilers )
The story concerns a man (whose name is Junpei, but that scarcely matters), who goes on vacation to the seaside and ends up imprisoned in a remote village half-buried by sand dunes, where the residents must spend every night shoveling sand to prevent the destruction of their houses.
There is also a woman (nameless), the owner of the house where he's imprisoned. However, be forewarned that the book's title smacks of marketing ploy. The book is not, in fact, about this "woman in the dunes," neither as subject nor as primary object. The book is about the relationship between the man and the sand (and the various existential questions the sand represents), and the woman is really just one aspect, albeit a significant one, of life amid the sand.
( No particular spoilers )
