Dazzlingly original, Kobo Abe's "The Woman in the Dunes" is one of the premier J
apanese novels in the twentieth century, and this "Penguin Classics" edition con
tains a new introduction by David Mitchell, author of "Cloud Atlas". Niki Jumpei
, an amateur entomologist, searches the scorching desert for beetles. As night f
alls he is forced to seek shelter in an eerie village, half-buried by huge sand
dunes.
He awakes to the terrifying realization that the villagers have impris
oned him with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit. Tricked into slave
ry and threatened with starvation if he does not work, Jumpei's only chance is t
o shovel the ever-encroaching sand - or face an agonising death. Among the great
est Japanese novels of the twentieth century, "The Woman in the Dunes" combines
the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel.
