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In the aftermath of World War II, Kuki Kyūzō, a Japanese youth raised in the puppet state of Manchuria, struggles to return home to Japan. What follows is a wild journey involving drugs, smuggling, chases, and capture. Kyūzō finally makes his way to the waters off Japan but finds himself unable to disembark. His nation remains inaccessible to him, and now he questions its very existence. Beasts Head for Home is an acute novel of identity, belonging, and the vagaries of human behavior from an exceptional modern Japanese author.
Price: $100.00
Pages: 224
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Series: Weatherhead Books on Asia
Publication Date:
23 May 2017
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9780231177047
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
FICTION / Literary, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Asian / Japanese, HISTORY / Asia / Japan
With its historical setting and named characters, Beasts Head for Home diverges from the surreal landscape of Abe's best-known work, The Woman in the Dunes, but alienation is at the Kafkaesque heart of both novels. Though Kyuzo somehow manages to complete his physical journey, he remains an exile, unable even to define the home he seeks. . . . The howling misery of his displacement circa 1947 resonates powerfully with the headlines of 2017: a grim story of the past for our grim present.
Abe Kobo (1924–1993) was one of Japan's greatest postwar writers, widely recognized for his imaginative fiction and plays of the absurd.
Richard F. Calichman is professor of Japanese studies at the City College of New York, CUNY. He is also the translator and editor of The Frontier Within: Essays by Abe Kobo (Columbia, 2013).
Introduction
Beasts Head for Home