Novel
The Woman in the Dunes
砂の女
Kobo Abe · 1962
Synopsis
Niki Jumpei, a Tokyo schoolteacher who collects insects, misses the last bus in a fishing village. The villagers lead him to a house in the dunes that can only be reached by a rope ladder, to a woman who lives alone at the bottom of a sand pit and clears sand at night, according to The Modern Novel. The next morning, the ladder has gone: he must, with her, clear the house of sand, and he is also expected to give her children.
Context
The novel appeared in 1962 from Shinchōsha and received the Yomiuri Prize the same year, according to The Modern Novel. The Encyclopædia Britannica regards it as the author's most popular novel. The hero is declared dead after seven years of absence. The film that a filmmaker made from it in 1964 received the special jury prize on the Croisette. E. Dale Saunders translated it into English in 1964, from Knopf, and Georges Bonneau into French, from Stock, in 1967.
Who it is for
A short novel, centred on a single man, for those who like fables of confinement and attempts at escape.
Prizes and reception
Translated into more than thirty languages, it received in France a prize for best foreign book in 1967, according to Nippon.com.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.