The Face of Another

The world of The Face of Another is the world of Japan in the 1960s , observed through Abe's highly tuned microscope; a world layered in paranoia, in which fast growing technology when not regulated, might create a terrifying nightmarish forecast of the future. Abe explores the foreign - the unknown within man, moving his protagonist in deceptive scenarios, observing his relationship with others, peeling away his external perceptions, to expose the layers within. A scientist's facial vulgarizati [...]

It is not surprising that readers, even if they are devout fans of Kōbō Abe, don’t take to The Face of Another in the same manner as The Woman in the Dunes or some of his other novels. It may be because of the uncomfortable feeling a reader gets being stuck in the narrator’s head for an entire novel (much like Camus’ The Stranger). The story is built on the premise of a wife finding her husband’s notebooks which are filled with solipsistic meanderings, repeated excursuses, counter-argu [...]

Kobo Abe es un escritor que me agrada notablemente. Admiro mucho su forma de escribir. Este es el tercer libro luego de haber leído la recopilación de cuentos “Los cuentos siniestros” y otra de sus novelas más conocidas, “Encuentros secretos”.Pero en este caso, debo reconocer que me costó muchísimo terminar el libro. Tal vez haya ocurrido esto por la densísima prosa reflexiva y los cuestionamientos existencialistas del personaje principal.La novela se compone de tres largos capítu [...]

Huge disappointment.I came across Kobo Abe by way of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s screen adaptation of ‘The Woman in the Dunes,’ as well as ‘Pitfall,’ both of which I regard as masterpieces of Japanese cinema, on par with the films of Kurosawa and the other Japanese greats. This was my first Kobo Abe novel.The premise is very compelling. Not so the execution. I found the prose so impenetrably dull and repetitive that my trying to stay focused to follow the narrator’s train of thought was qu [...]

Face of Another is a kind of post-Kafka take on the experiment gone wrong stories of Wells and Stevenson. Abe sometimes sinks his narrative drive by fully realizing the artifice through which he is revealing his story, here it is the notebooks of the scientist who creates the titular object, written to his wife. This mirrors the structures of Secret Rendezvous and Box Man and in the final post-script of the wife echoes the finale of Tanizaki’s The Key. The notebooks contain anecdotal philosoph [...]

This is by far my favorite of Abe’s novels. Mainly due to the odd tension he is able to sustain through long, often philosophically concerned monologues of a man who, after burning his face, decides to fashion and wear a mask in an effort to locate the social effect of the self and how that self can be split. It kept reminding me of a more universally centered American Psycho, 30 years before Ellis’s, with even more layering of psychological effect and more eerie calm as the narrator continu [...]

Αρκετά διαφορετικό από τη Γυναίκα της Άμμου, με λιγότερο εντυπωσιακή γραφή. Τα θέματα όμως με τα οποία καταπιάνεται ο Άμπε ( η ταυτότητα με τους μύθους και τις διαστροφές της, η μοναξιά, η σχέση του ανθρώπου με τον Άλλο σε όλα τα επίπεδα, ο έρωτας, τα σεξουαλικά ταμπού, η ψυχοσ� [...]

But then, it just occurred to me … it’s probably a good thing to go to the movies occasionally. The whole audience puts on the actor’s face. No one needs his own. A movie’s a place where you pay your money to exchange faces for a while

If Abe Kobo is one of the most important writers in post-war Japan, then The Face of Another is one of its most incisive commentaries on human nature and identity. Brilliantly conceived and meticulously crafted, a work of this magnitude can only be the product of an intellectual with rare creative ability. It is a veritable invention of genius, and nothing less than a philosophical tour de force.The Japanese title Tanin no Kao is a more apt title for it connotes something stronger than just "of [...]

"The face of another" is a classical Abe novel that has all his hallmark features: verbose, erotic (unusually mild in this novel), with penchant for excessive philosophical rant. This novel was written in the format of a note left by a man, whose face was disfigured in an accident, to his wife. In the first part he argues the significance of one's face for social interactions and the features that constitute different face types. In the second part he talks about his social experiments after wea [...]

Suka banget sama novel lama ini, yang berkisah tentang derita seorang lelaki yang wajahnya cacat akibat kecelakaan di laboratorium. Tokoh "aku", seorang ahli kimia molekuler, wajahnya terbakar hingga rusak parah, yang bersisa di wajahnya hanya jejaring-jejaring daging akibat luka keloid.Wajah yang merupakan penanda identitas, bagi lelaki ini juga menjadi sangat begitu pentingnya. Setelah tak lagi mempunyai wajah ia begitu menderita, terasing, bahkan sang istri pun berkhianat hingga ia harus teru [...]

Actually, what I ask of you is quite something else again. I want some sign of a completely meaningful human relationship—the lines are indistinct—call it heart or soul. *And even now, when I think of the distance between us, the measure of it is the remoteness of your expression and nothing else.*Under any circumstances, I simply did not want to lose you. To lose you would be symbolic of losing the world. *Our silence was not the vacuum that comes from having said all there is to say. Whate [...]

Oh, the under-appreciated Kobo Abe. His work is always intriguing, especially Women in the Dunes and The Ruined Map, and usually quite compelling, but something about this one had me less than enthusiastic to pick it up. Don't get me wrong, I liked it, but it just wasn't the same Abe I have enjoyed so much in his previous novels. There is plenty of intrigue: a man loses his face in a laboratory accident, constructs a mask to hide the deformity, then, as he plays psychological mind games with him [...]

O fato do narrador levar o conceito de persona amalgamando-o à literalidade criando uma tensão constante que haverá uma ruptura de tabu e no exato momento que isso vai se concretizar o livro acaba. Eu diria que é de fato uma grande obra, mas passar por todas as minúcias presentes no texto é um trabalho um tanto quanto árduo, para não dizer entediante.

երրերդ տետրը լավն էրմարդու ու հասարակության, ինքնության, ես֊ի ու ուրիշի փոխհարաբերությունների մասին մտորումները դուրս եկանմնացածը՝ ինչ֊որ միջին

1) que eu lembre, muito diferente do filme do Teshigahara de 66. / 2) bom pra ler com as trilhas sonoras do Toru Takemitsu. /3) essa edição da cosacnaify é 'a ideal'.~~~7.5/10.0~~~

Հենց սկզբից հավանեցի Աբեի գրելաոճը:Երրորդն է, որ կարդում եմ ճապոնական գրականությունից ու հաստատ վերջինը չի) Հեղինակը հետաքրքիր ձևով է ներկայացնում.նախ գրում է արձակ ոճով,որը ավելի ընդունելի է ինձ համար,որովհետև ազատ է ու ոչ մի օրենքի չի ենթարկվում,հետո` գիրքը իրենից մի երկա [...]

Interesting and strange, I still think this was my least favorite Abe that I've read yet. It's well worth reading, but the wildness isn't as wild as the other Abe I've read and the prose is more of a slog. Overly cerebral without flying as much perhaps. Still would have read it knowing before what I know now, but it just isn't the best of what I think Abe could do.

Of course the author ended with a movie summary in highly lyrical language just to show he could do it if he wanted to - write beautifully. The rest of the book is great in voice - the narrator is unbearably self-centered. I felt claustrophobic being stuck inside his head. Lots and lots of intriguing and smart diagnosis of identityde me think about masks a great deal. Made me wonder if I could design my own face to suit what I think my soul is? It probably wouldn't even be a face. It would be a [...]

Đỗ vỡ, hoài nghi, cay đắng, điên cuồng, giả dối, hèn nhát, tàn nhẫn, ân hận, tuyệt vọng một khuôn mặt đã từng có và mất đi có đại diện cho toàn bộ con người của người sở hữu nó đến nhường ấy chăng. Liệu cái tôi và bản chất của một người có được quyết định và duy trì bởi khuôn mặt mà người ấy mang. Một cuộc hành trình kỳ lạ và đau đớn, không phải là tìm lại chính [...]

In this book, I could see the obvious influence of Kafka on Abe's writing. It's similar to The Metamorphosis whereby daily activities are written out as it is perceived by the protagonist. It is a disturbing book, in a way that one can't really say – perhaps in the way that there is a hint of mental illness, and some justification to every action, whether moral or not.The protagonist's obsession with "face" was derived from his lack of one, and ever since his facelessness has seen things diffe [...]

Great book, now it's time to rewatch the movie. "I have proven that a mask by its very existence is basically destructive. Equivalent to premeditated murder, the mask can stand shoulder to shoulder, with no feeling of inferiority, with arson or banditry. It was not surprising that the mask, which itself was a form of destruction, was not inspired to such crimes as arson and murder, although it was in the act of walking now through the ruins of human relationships destroyed by its existence. Desp [...]

I think this book was brilliantly conceived, the ideas of the notebooks written to his wife, and the entire premise. The writing itself was atrocious though. Abe spends way too much time rambling, less time on the meat of the story and should have explored this story in different ways. This is my second book by Abe, and the first was compelling enough to make me pick up this one after not being completely won over by the first. This one is going to turn me off of reading him in the future though [...]

This book is a Japanese classic by Kobo Abe who expresses the need for 'masks' in an eloquent and poignant way. His explanation and understanding of how a person's mask comes across to others and is perceived by themselves is very thought-provoking. Quite a difficult read in terms of the language in places as the book is essentially an extended essay of feelings and emotions. Overall, I liked it.

I once read a line somewhere “person word is derived from a Greek root Persona which literally means A Mask.” Aren’t we all masks amid myriad of masks? Does our personality change if our face is changed? Do we start behaving differently if we were liberated from the bogey of the face whose identity defines us?These are just few questions whose answers begs more questions than the answers itself. When I read the excerpt of this book, I thought it might an extension of those 20th century got [...]

I have been sampling a number of Japanese novelists recently, so I thought I'd give Kobo Abe a try. The blurb and initial few pages of 'The Face of Another' suggested I was in for a Kafkaesque experience, which I was up to a point. The premise of a man whose face has been destroyed in a laboratory accident, and who attempts to build a new face for himself, sounded promising. Unfortunately, I found the pace and marshalling of events (such as they are) slow and rather flaccid: very wordy, and not [...]

Sudėtinga, bet tikrai abejonių nepalikusi knyga. Autorius meistriškai veda skaitytoją per žmogaus minčių džiungles. Skaityti šią knygą man buvo ganėtinai didelis iššūkis - didžiąją laiko dalį norėjosi ištraukti veikėją iš jo galvos ir pastatyti atgal į jo gyvenimą, bet, deja, autorius tokio malonumo nesuteikė

É difícil descrever a obra de Kobo Abe com um adjetivo que não genial. Quando li seu "Woman in the Dunes", há alguns anos, fiquei fascinado. "O Rosto de um Outro", contudo, é uma obra diferente, mais complexa e difícil (lutei com o livro no terceiro quarto), mas não menos brilhante.

In Kobo Abe's The Face of Another, a man's face is destroyed in a lab accident, and he inwardly embarks on an agonizing journey of self-analysis while outwardly constructing a mask to conceal his wounds.The novel is described as "an intellectual horror story of the highest order," but it reads like a metaphysical mystery. Having recently completed Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, I cannot help but see a strong similarity between this novel and the Trilogy in subject matter, composition and even t [...]

Seorang ilmuwan mengalami kecelakaan percobaan di laboratorium kimia yang menyebabkan kulit wajahnya rusak dan melepuh. Setelah itu ia membebat seluruh kepalanya dengan perban; maka iapun terlihat berbeda, seperti orang aneh, monster, dijauhi orang-orang, bahkan istrinya menolak bercinta. Didorong rasa sakit hati dan amarah, ia bekerja keras membuat topeng paling sempurna yang akan memberinya wajah baru sebagai manusia.Ditampilkan sebagai kumpulan catatan harian yang dinarasikan langsung oleh si [...]