Synopses & Reviews
Featuring the naturalistic prose and fantastic imagination that brought Kobo Abe international acclaim, Secret Rendezvous is another masterpiece from Japan's most gifted and original writer of serious fiction.
The nameless narrator of this fascinating tale is searching for his wife, who has been taken to a mysteriously vast underground hospital that turns out to be a surreal sexual labyrinth dedicated to bizarre experiments. After a few days of fruitless probing he finds himself suddenly appointed the hospital's chief of security, head of an extensive and intricate network of surveillance, and yet no closer to finding his wife. With its nightmarish vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is as distinctive as it is unsettling.
About the Author
Kobo Abe was born in Tokyo in 1924, grew up in Manchuria, and returned to Japan in his early twenties. In 1948 he received a medical degree from Tokyo Imperial University, but he never practiced medicine. Before his death in 1993, Abe was considered his country's foremost living novelist, and was also widely known as a dramatist. His novels have earned many literary awards and prizes, and have all been best sellers in Japan. They include The Woman in the Dunes, Kangaroo Notebook, The Ark Sakura, The Face of Another, The Box Man, and The Ruined Map.