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Start giftingThe Woman in the Dunes
Narrator
Julian Cihi
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Length
6 hours 14 minutes
Language
English
The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel.
After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans. Held captive with seemingly no chance of escape, he is tasked with shoveling back the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten to destroy the village. His only companion is an odd young woman. Together their fates become intertwined as they work side by side at this Sisyphean task.
KOBO ABE was born in 1924 in Tokyo and grew up in Mukden, Manchuria, during World War II. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Abe is considered one of his country's foremost novelists. His books have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been best sellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, The Ark Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man, and Secret Rendezvous. Abe is also widely known as a dramatist. He died in 1993.
Reviews
“Devious, addictive. . . . Never less than compulsive. . . . Abe is an accomplished stylist.”—David Mitchell
“Abe follows with meticulous precision his hero's constantly shifting physical, emotional and psychological states.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“As is true of Poe and Kafka . . . Abe creates on the page an unexpected impulsion. One continues reading, on and on.”
—The New Yorker Expand reviews