Kōbō Abe

In this famous postwar Japanese novel, the first of Abe's to be translated into English, Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist in pursuit of a rare specimen of beetle, wanders into a strange seaside village, whose residents all live in sandpits. He is taken prisoner, and, along with a widow cast out by the community, he is forced to move into her sandpit and continually shovel away the sand that threatens to take over the village. In Niki's struggles...

"Set in Manchuria in the aftermath of the Asian Pacific War. The central character is Kuki Kyūzō, whose settler parents relocated from Japan to the Manchurian puppet-state as the Japanese empire expanded. Kyūzō's father, a factory technician, dies shortly after he is born. In the course of Japan's defeat and the Soviet Union's occupation of Manchuria, Kyūzō's mother is seriously wounded, forcing him to remain behind with her rather than evacuate...

Mr. Nemuro, a respected salesman, disappeared over half a year ago, but only now does his alluring yet alcoholic wife hire a private eye. The nameless detective has but two clues: a photo and a matchbook. With these he embarks upon an ever more puzzling pursuit that leads him into the depths of Tokyo's dangerous underworld, where he begins to lose the boundaries of his own identity.

Un detective sin nombre es contratado para buscar a alguien que ha desaparecido. Obsesivo, metódico, desconfiado, lleva sus averiguaciones hasta extremos inusitados, analizando cada supuesta prueba hasta reducirla al absurdo. Pronto la investigación se transforma en un laberinto infinito de hipótesis, especulaciones y mentiras. Inevitablemente, está condenado a extraviarse y la esposa del desaparecido, una mujer de inquietante belleza y compleja

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