内容紹介
Told in the form, and with the suspense of a mystery novel, The Ruined Map is a melodrama of the mind, is thriller-like excitement allied to a profound mythic quality that has placed Kobo Abe in the forefront of the world’s avant-garde novelists. The central character is a detective- a hunter- searching for a missing person in the vast desert of the modern city. The pursuits, violent and nightmarish, leads deeper and deeper into the underworld of Tokyo, through shady commercial enterprises to backalley nude shows, gangs of outlaw “gypsy” cab drivers, hoodlums preying on junkie and homosexuals, businessmen whose business is corruption and death. As the hunt quickens, the professional disciplines that bind the detective to the real world paradoxically demand that he “become” the man he seeks. He has no choice but to think, act, and feel as he imagines his quarry must. Gradually, he finds his own identity, personality, and map of his once familiar world and self blurring with that of the lost man. In this novel, Abe brilliantly dramatize the ambiguity and flux of individual identity in the rushing, directionless, packed crowds of contemporary life.
著者について
Kobo Abe (1924-1993) was born in Tokyo but spent his childhood in Manchuria, where his father was a doctor on the staff of a medical school. As a young man, Abe was interested in mathematics and collecting insects. He obtained a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University in 1948, but never practiced medicine. Abe received Japan’s most important literary prize, the Akutagawa, in 1951 for his novel The Crimes of Mr. S. Karuma. Several of his novels have been made into films.