Description

Japanese writer Kōbō Abe’s 1977 novel is a Kafaesque marvel and a biting satire of bureaucracy, medicine and modern life.

In Tokyo, in the middle of the night, an uncalled-for ambulance arrives to spirit away a man’s wife, though she is perfectly healthy. He sets out on an epic journey to find her, around the labyrinthine corners of a strange and enormous hospital. Days into his search, having encountered countless strange characters, odd sexual experiments and the unmistakable feeling of being watched, he is suddenly appointed to be the hospital’s chief of security, and his new boss is convinced that he is a horse. Throughout it all, he will never stop searching for his wife.