A Note About the Author
Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924 but grew up in Mukden, Manchuria, where his father, a doctor, was on the staff of the medical school. As a young man Mr. Abe was interested in mathematics and insect collecting as well as the works of Poe, Dostoevski, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Kafka. He received a medical degree from Tokyo University in 1948, but he has never practiced medicine. In that same year he published his first book, The Road Sign at the End of the Street. In 1951 he was awarded the most important Japanese literary prize, the Akutagawa, 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. It was the first of Mr. Abe's novels to be published in translation in the United States, in 1964. The Face of Another (1966)_ was also made into a film by Mr. Teshigahara. Other novels in translation include The Ruined Map (1969), Friends (1969), The Box Man (1974), and The Man Who Turned Into a Stick (1976).