The Face of Another [Paperback]

Kobo Abe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1992

The Japanese novelist Kobo Abe has often been compared to Kafka and this 1966 novel suggests an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis. Abe's narrator is a scientist who has been hideously deformed in a laboratory accident, a man who has lost his face in a society where "losing face" is a synonym for humiliation. Alienated from his fellows, sexually rejected by his wife, the injured man painstakingly sets out to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. Yet once he achieves his goal, he realizes that he has not fashioned a disguise, but an alternate self -- a self that is capable of anything. The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A major novel." -- The Christian Science Monitor

"Probes the edges of a waking nightmare." -- The Saturday Review

"[A] fascinating book." -- Newsweek

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Japanese

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha Amer Inc (July 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770016344
• ISBN-13: 978-4770016348
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,409,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A face to meet the faces that we meet..., May 16, 2007

By 

Mark Nadja "Literary Outlaw, author *Hardcore... (New York City) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Face of Another (Paperback)

Everyone knows that in Japanese society there's hardly anything worse than losing face. Kobo Abe starts with this cultural taboo and amplifies it to its logically nightmarish extreme as he explores the existential horror experienced by a scientist who literally loses his face in a laboratory accident. Hideously disfigured and shunned even by his former friends and colleagues, the narrator of *The Face of Another* describes in harrowing detail the totality of his isolation from human contact--especially from his conventional, well-meaning wife--and his desperate plan to create for himself a life-like mask that will reopen the `doorway' between him and the community of others.

The novel itself is written as an extended address to the aforementioned wife and meant to be read after he carries out his intention of seducing her as the `stranger' the mask allows him to become. Between the elaborate preparation of the mask and the ill-fated seduction, Abe's narrator travels a zig-zag path between cynicism and self-loathing, psychological breakdown and philosophical speculation as he confronts the elusive nature of human relations and personal identity. His mask gives him a passport to cross the border forbidden the faceless and to re-enter society. Even more, it grants him the radical freedom to be someone else, to be anyone else...to be everyone else. But at what price? If he must wear a mask has he really accomplished anything? Is he really being seen by others or is his `true' self as invisible as before--and just who is he, anyway? How does he choose his mask? Does a mask ultimately reveal or conceal? Which mask will his estranged wife be seduced by? And if she is seduced, has she been unfaithful? Has she betrayed him with himself? As he contemplates these labyrinthine questions, Abe's narrator comes to understand how even people with undamaged faces are also wearing a mask when they're with others. Is the face itself nothing but a mask made of flesh?

This eerie, thought-provoking novel operates on several different levels. But what makes it more than just another Jeckyll & Hyde tale of evil doubles, shadow-selves, and dual identities is the profound philosophical dialectic that Abe engages in throughout. A mystery, thriller, horror novel all in one, *The Face of Another* is a sophisticated meditation on that most enigmatic question of all: who exactly are we?

At times Abe's story drags, at other times his musings are difficult to follow, almost as if some vital connection between his observations had been lost in translation, and, therefore minus one-star, but, the last fifty pages or so are as powerful as anything you're likely to read. For the most part, *The Face of Another* is a riveting and disturbing work that, like Abe's classic *The Woman in the Dunes,* I won't soon--if ever--forget. You probably won't either.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Slow-going at first but well worth it!, July 8, 1999

By 

Jim Conant (Ithaca, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Face of Another (Paperback)

I initially found this novel hard to respect since the central theme of a man and his mask seemed trite and a cliche. However this setup does allow the novel's main character to seduce his wife, posing as a stranger; a strange social situation which was described with much empathy and insight by Abe.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Extraordinary Achievement, October 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Face of Another (Paperback)

Not one of the truly great novels, no doubt (and there are so few), but outstanding and amazing, nonetheless. Recommended, despite philosophical musings of a gratuitous density and complexity -- at times, quite beyond full comprehension.