The Woman In The Dunes By Kobo Abe

Kobo Abe (1924 -1993); his given name was Kimifusa which with a Chinese type pronunciation became Kobo. Abe’s father was a physician and Abe trained as a physician, although he never became a doctor but instead pursued writing and a keen interest in entomology. In 1951, Abe received the most important Japanese literary prize, the Akutagawa Award, for his novel The Crime of Mr. S. Karuma. In 1960 his novel The Woman in the Dunes won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. It was made into a film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1963 and won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Abe dedicated most of his later career to writing plays and directing his own theatre troupe in Tokyo until his death in 1993.

The story of The Woman in the Dunes is told by an anonymous narrator. The writing is straight forward and not complex in its construction. The details of the tale are at times interwoven with philosophical musing, a result of the plight of the protagonist as he would see it and something that leads the reader to witness all the steps taken by the protagonist to rationalize his situation. This aspect of the writing appears to be aesthetically polarizing; some will like it but not quite know why, and some will dislike it and not quite know why. Identification is another role that seemingly plays out in Abe’s work; many a reader will find resemblances to the hapless insect collector and his doomed life of repetitively performing a monotonous activity. In many ways Abe’s composition examines the stages of psychosis of the imprisoned; captives who first find their circumstances unreasonable and who linger over the injustice with only thoughts of escape – finally to eventually accept their plight, adjusting their image of circumstances to reflect normalcy, even feeling friendship to their captors as time goes on and escape becomes hopeless.

The tale itself is about a young teacher, an amateur entomologist, who departs one day for an outing to a sea side area of the country in search of a particular beetle that he believes he will find in the sand dunes there. As the story unfolds, we find the hapless young man encountering the inhabitants of a strange village built in the sands, whereupon he is unwittingly deceived into being lowered to a house, occupied by a lone woman, at the bottom of a sand basin; he soon realizes there is no subsequent escape and that the ever falling sand must be shoveled into containers for removal each day lest it overtake and bury the house and its inhabitants.

I had mixed emotions about Kobo Abe’s work. I liked the emotional tenseness produced of the circumstances of unjust captivity, but at the same time, I felt the strangeness of the environment to make the composition seem otherworldly. Further, I didn’t always appreciate the musing provided by the protagonist – it seemed detached. As to the character of the protagonist, he also was a strange one, for he seemed to be quite intelligent and inventive, yet clumsy and inept at the same time; the dichotomy was exasperating especially because it foiled his escape.

All in all, I liked the story of The Woman in the Dunes in spite of some of the bothersome aspects.
I would recommend you add this novel to your reading list and rate it “Pleasurable-not memorable”.

One of the best books I’ve ever read.
It felt eerie and creepy without any climax to confirm these feelings, making you feel unsettled in a long lasting way.
This book was not written in my time period or country but it is still relatable.
An amazing piece of art

You will remember the size of sand for the rest of your life if you read this.

Not a book review. Quality is amazing. Print and Font size is good.