John's review
Woman in the Dunes (Penguin Classics)
by Kobo Abe, David Mitchell
John's review
Woman in the Dunes (Penguin Classics) by Kobo Abe, David Mitchell
John's review
rating:
The Kobo Abe novel "Woman in the Dunes is a Japanese novel written in the 1960s and made in the same person. It traces, in a small book of less then 300 pages, the implications of being alienated and the contradictions of conformity freedom if that conformity has a purpose.
Niki Junpei a teacher trapped in a empty teaching job, a failed relationship and a life mapped up to retirement and death goes a secret 3 day trip- done to wind up his work colleagues. He is an amateur entomologist (bug collector!) which in Japan of the period is an equally conforming hobby. (The imagery of trapping, collecting, recording and pinning is an important an important motif.
Junpei is interested in sand bugs so goes to area of sand dunes. When he misses the last bus back, a group of locals suggest he stays the night in their village. They send him down a rope-ladder to a house at the bottom of a sandpit, where a young widow lives alone. She has been tasked along with a handful of other househ...more
Niki Junpei a teacher trapped in a empty teaching job, a failed relationship and a life mapped up to retirement and death goes a secret 3 day trip- done to wind up his work colleagues. He is an amateur entomologist (bug collector!) which in Japan of the period is an equally conforming hobby. (The imagery of trapping, collecting, recording and pinning is an important an important motif.
Junpei is interested in sand bugs so goes to area of sand dunes. When he misses the last bus back, a group of locals suggest he stays the night in their village. They send him down a rope-ladder to a house at the bottom of a sandpit, where a young widow lives alone. She has been tasked along with a handful of other househ...more
