I like the more direct translation of the Japanese title ( Suna no onna): "Sand woman." Because while The Woman in the Dunes sounds like something kinda gothic and kinda literary and magical, "Sand woman" conjures up images of an antlion or something, and I think that's a lot closer to what Kobo Abe was trying to convey. A lot of that probably has to do with the Cannes prize-winning 1964 film. This is one of the most well-known Japanese literary novels to Westerners, at least before Haruki Murakami became the Japanese Stephen King. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village. One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Women in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel.
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