Synopses & Reviews
The last novel written before its author's death in 1993, Kangaroo Notebook marries magic realism to social satire. The result is a vision of contemporary Japanese society that manages to be simultaneously fearful and jarringly funny.
When Kobo Abe's gentle, self-effacing narrator contracts a disorder that turns him into a living vegetable patch, he becomes the victim of forces that alternately torture him, fuss over him, and neglect him. In due course he is plunged -- via a self-propelled hospital bed -- into a hell inhabited both by officious child demons and a sexy, bloodthirsty nurse who hopes to collect the "Miss Dracula" medal. Only Japan's most eminent novelist could have assembled these grotesqueries into a work that is not just coherent but funny, touching, and imbued with unexpected meaning.
Synopsis
In the last novel written before his death in 1993, one of Japan's most distinguished novelists proffered a surreal vision of Japanese society that manages to be simultaneously fearful and jarringly funny. The narrator of Kangaroo Notebook wakes on morning to discover that his legs are growing radish sprouts, an ailment that repulses his doctor but provides the patient with the unusual ability to snack on himself. In short order, Kobo Abe's unraveling protagonist finds himself hurtling in a hospital bed to the very shores of hell. Abe has assembled a cast of oddities into a coherent novel, one imbued with unexpected meaning. Translated from the Japanese by Maryellen Toman Mori.