The Box Man
Language: English
Published by Penguin Books Ltd, 2020
- Softcover
- Used

Seller: Book Grocer, Tullamarine, VIC, AustraliaBook Grocer
AbeBooks seller since October 15, 2025
Condition: Used
£ 11.62
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Kobo Abe, Penguin Books Ltd. Kobo Abe's existential and entertaining masterpiece 'This is the record of a box man' The streets of Tokyo have been seeing a strange phenomenon recently - people who have decided to live their lives in a box on the street. Behind their cut-out eyeholes, they sit and watch from behind their four cardboard walls. Our nameless narrator, at first repulsed by the box men, slowly becomes drawn in to the anonymity and voyeuristic life inside a box. As his identity slowly slips away and he becomes obsessed with watching an intriguing young nurse, we too become privy to the schizophrenic and seductive unreality of a box man's life.Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924, grew up in Manchuria, and returned to Japan in his early twenties. Before his death in 1993, Abe was considered his country's foremost living novelist. His novels have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been bestsellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, The Ark Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man and The Ruined Map.…
Seller Inventory # 9780241454596-RETAIL
- Title
- The Box Man
- Author
- Kobo Abe
- Publisher
- Penguin Books Ltd
- Publication year
- 2020
- Book Type
- Paperback
- Binding
- Paperback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 024145459X
- ISBN 13
- 9780241454596
- Item weight
- 0.125 kilograms
- Dimensions
- 129
'A spellbinder from beginning to end, an edgy masterpiece' Chicago Sun Times
'This is the record of a box man'. Anonymous and alone, the box man peeps out of his cut-out eyeholes and watches the world from behind his four cardboard walls. At first repulsed by the strange phenomenon of people who have decided to abandon society and live in boxes on the Tokyo streets, he has found himself drawn into the anonymity and voyeurism of their life. As he becomes obsessed with spying on a young nurse, his identity slips away, in Kobo Abe's eerie, disorienting and seductive masterpiece of unease.
'Funny, sad and destructive ... an invention with its own crazy pull, it gnaws at the reader ... a stunning addition to the literature of eccentricity' The New York Times
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About the Author
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Book Grocer
Tullamarine, VIC, Australia
AbeBooks seller since October 15, 2025
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