Book Reviews

Amazon.com
This beautiful novel by one of Japan's most important writers is also one of the most strangely terrifying and memorable books you'll ever read. The Woman in the Dunes is the story of an amateur entomologist who wanders alone into a remote seaside village in pursuit of a rare beetle he wants to add to his collection. But the townspeople take him prisoner. They lower him into the sand-pit home of a young widow, a pariah in the poor community, who the villagers have condemned to a life of shoveling back the ever-encroaching dunes that threaten to bury the town. An amazing book.

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by Abe Kobo, published in Japanese as Suna no onna in 1962. This avant-garde allegory is esteemed as one of the finest Japanese novels of the postwar period; it was the first of Abe's novels to be translated into English. The protagonist of The Woman in the Dunes is Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist who, on a weekend trip from the city, discovers a bizarre village in the dunes where residents live in deep sand pits. Imprisoned with a widow in one of the pits, he must shovel the omnipresent sand that threatens to bury the community. The novel relates Niki's attempts to escape the pit, his relationship with the woman, and his gradual acceptance of a new identity. Showing more similarities to the works of Franz Kafka than to those of Japanese contemporaries, The Woman in the Dunes is noted for its unusual plot, its detailed descriptions of the sand, and its existential examination of the human condition.

Inside Flap Copy
One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Women in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village.