Abe, Kobo | Margaret Mitsutani (review date July-September 1991)
Margaret Mitsutani (review date July-September 1991)
SOURCE: Mitsutani, Margaret. “Abe Kōbō's Early Short Fiction.” Japan Quarterly 38, no. 3 (July-September 1991): 347-49.
[In the following essay, Mitsutani applauds the broad range of Abe's stories in Beyond the Curve, maintaining that it gives readers “the opportunity for a fresh perspective on one of the most familiar of modern Japanese writers.”]
The name of Abe Kōbō has been familiar to English readers for over 25 years now, ever since E. Dale Saunders's translation of Woman in the Dunes (1962; tr. 1964)—probably still Abe's best-known novel in the English-speaking world—appeared in 1964, the same year in which Teshigahara Hiroshi's haunting monochrome film based on it received international acclaim. With a total of eight full-length novels, two plays, and a smattering of short fiction tucked away in anthologies and magazines currently available in...
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