Kangaroo Notebook

A vision of contemporary Japanese society that manages to be simultaneously fearful and jarringly funny. At the center of the story is a gentle, self-effacing man who contracts a disorder that makes him a vegetable, and he becomes the victim of forces that alternately torture him, fuss over him, and neglect him. This last novel written before its author's death in 1993 marries magic realism to social satire and ends up with unexpected meaning. nIn 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.