This is the first book I have read by Kobo Abe, a much respected Japanese writer who died in 1993. An evacuated mine has been carefully convered into a nuclear shelter by an overweight, bullied man, called Mole. He now needs to find people who will live with him in preparation for the apocolypse. Attending a rooftop sale he meets a salesman of clockbeetles to whom he offers a ticket on the voyage ahead. Two shills who pose as customers to boost sales (Sakura) steal the ticket and race to the mine, ahead of Mole. Mole entreats them to join the voyage, knwoing he cannot get rid of them and one of the sakura is an attracrtive female. There are further unwanted intruders and his carefully laid traps appear to be undone by someone with insider knowledge. Unable to control the situation to his advantage, rejected by the female shill, he takes the only way out he can.

This is a slightly odd book, translated into a very dry English prose. Is it safe to assume that the original is just as dry and without emotion? In my posts about Japanese literature I have come up against this problem before. The characters are all deeply flawed and unlikeable and the central insistence that a Japanese nobody is able to buy a disused mine and equip it with aircon, explosives and firearms left me unpersuaded. I found this spoiled my reading of what is, otherwise, an interesting book about oddball characters out of their depth, building their destructive relationships from nothing to cataclysm. Whether there is huge symbology that a lot of it takes place with the main character stuck in a toilet induced vortex I have yet to work out.

My first Abe book... and am not going to compare his writing to Murakami’s. I am not. It’s not fair. Here’s hoping the next Abe book I read tickles my fancy!

this book sucks and i hated reading it mostly. but it was pretty funny

Interesting concept, the first few chapters setting up the story and the characters were interesting, but once the sexism got going I found it hard to get through. Wouldn't reread or recommend, but didn't 100% hate it.

خییییلی جذاب و پر از تعلیق

با آغوشی باز و پیش‌فرض ذهنی مثبتی سمت کوبو آبه رفتم و البته با اطلاع از این موضوع که این کتاب، بهترین و شاخص‌ترین اثرش نیست. و خب انتخاب و شروع مناسبی برای کوبو آبه بود.
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داستان حول محور یه شخصیتِ خپلِ چاقِ منزوی می‌چرخه که بخاطر ترس و نگرانی بابت جنگ جهانیِ اتمی یا به تعبیری آخرالزمان اتمی به یه معدن در زیر زمین پناه برده و اونجا رو تبدیل به یه پناهگاهِ جُداشونده‌ی متحرک کرده تا در صورت وقوع فاجعه‌ی اتمی، بتونه خودش و افرادی که با گزینش و سخت‌گیری خاص خودش انتخاب می‌شن رو نجات بده. و خب حس می‌کنم لازمه بدونید این کتاب سال ۱۹۸۴ و در غوغای جنگ سرد نوشته شده؛ یعنی زمانی که جهان هر لحظه رو در تهدید جنگ اتمی و نظامی به سر می‌برد.
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داستان شروع خیلی خوبی داره و خیلی خوب هم پیش می‌ره. شخصیت‌ها درست و به‌جا اضافه می‌شن و نقش و جاشون تو این پازل مشخصه. تعدادشون بی‌خودی زیاد و شلوغ نیست و نویسنده با تعداد نسبتاً کمی ایده‌ی داستان رو پیش می‌بره و هدف و مقصدش هم مشخصه. ولی اون هدف نهاییِ داستان که به نظرم باید یکی از مهم‌ترین نقاط عطف داستان باشه اصلاً راضیم نکرد. یعنی همه‌ی اون قضایا و اتفاقاتی که از ابتدا واسش آماده شدیم و به‌مرور همراهش پیش رفتیم یکهو با یه‌ اتفاق و پیچِ داستانی بهم ریخت و معادلات داستان نابود شد؛ خب این می‌تونه یه اتفاق خیلی عالی در داستان باشه که به یه پایان کم‌نظیر و تکان‌دهنده ختم بشه، ولی واسه من نشد! و به نظرم حتی همین پایانی که رقم خورد هم می‌تونست بهتر اتفاق بیفته و از پایان داستان حس ناکافی‌بودن گرفتم‌. ایده‌ای که خوب شکل گرفت و پیش رفت، ولی با یه پایانِ بی‌رمق حیف و میل شد. البته که کاری با تعابیر و تفاسیر فلسفی و عرفانی و نمادگرایانه که خیلی از عزیزان از دل داستان‌ها می‌کشن بیرون و بخشیش محترم و درست و خیلی‌هاشم بی‌خودی و اضافه‌ست ندارم. این داستان فارغ از این بحث‌ها، پایانِ درستی نداشت و من رو راضی و قانع نکرد؛ و من در رابطه با پایان داستان‌ها پُرتوقع و وسواسی‌ام؛ قبلاً هم گفتم.

I have complicated feelings about this book. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone I know and I certainly won't reread it, but it's not completely without merit. More of a review to come later as I collect my thoughts.

Having read up on Abe a little bit and seeing that Kafka was one of his favorite writers, you can definitely see the influence here.

I was a bit thrown by the fact that this is part of the Penguin Sci-Fi Classics series though - the threat of a nuclear war is the driving force for Mole creating his 'ark', so I guess this is enough for it to be classed as sci-fi?

What's with the misogyny and the gratuitous, unobjected booty spanking???

Originally published in Japan in 1984 and translated into English in 1988, this novel is presented by the publisher as a work of science fiction, but it isn’t. There is no speculative element here at all.

The story revolves around an underground quarry repurposed as a nuclear bomb shelter in the expectation of nuclear war (the titular ark), but the locale is secondary to the mindset of the characters. Spoiler: the nuclear threat is all in their heads. But that’s clear from the start. So not sci-fi at all.

This is a work of literary absurdism, an almost voyeuristic examination of the first-person narrator’s pathetic neuroses, his school-boyish survivalism, his traumatic past, his squalid present, his reclusive inability to comprehend women, all of which are amplified when his sanctuary is invaded by conmen and then by the local gangsters.

Not one character is sympathetic. They are all repulsive individuals, seeking to exploit, trick, abuse, and dominate each other in ever decreasing circles of power, but failing abysmally, ridiculously (the narrator spends a considerable part of the action with one foot stuck in a toilet). Everything about the location, the events, the situations encountered, is repulsive, squalid, dilapidated, and yet it is all strangely compelling. This is well symbolised by the central place held in the story by a possibly mythical insect that lives exclusively off its own faeces.

This is not just random accumulation of detail. Every aspect of the story forms part of a coherent, consistent, and well thought out whole, with recurring motifs and clear cause and consequence, which drives the reader on to find out how this concatenation of absurdity will play out, despite the ever growing “ick” factor, with murder, corpse disposal, and abduction of schoolgirls adding to the ever growing list of improbable and horrific complications to a tense stand-off.

It’s one of those stories where the spectator is deeply uncomfortable but cannot look away. It’s a book that demands to be read to the end, even though the reader wonders with every page just what the hell they are reading. On that basis, this is a good read. But probably not one I’d go back to. So three stars for now at least. Until morbid curiosity makes me pick it up again.

_منظورت چیه؟

+یه وردی هست که همیشه می‌خونمش.
یادمه یه بار وقتی مشغول تماشای آسمون بودم به نظرم اومد شبیه یه موجود زنده ست، هم عملکردشون تو تبدیل کربن دی اکسید به اکسیژن، همیشه هم در حال تغییرن و به عنوان بازوهای هوا، تو وزش باد و فشار تاثیر می‌ذارن. از اون طرف علف‌ها و ریشه‌های درخت‌ها هم مثل دست و پا و انگشت‌هاش می‌مونن. حیوون‌ها هم مثل گلبول‌ها و ویروس‌ها و باکتری‌ها اون وسط زندگی می‌کنن...

_آدم‌ها چین اونوقت؟

+شاید انگل باشن.

_شایدم سرطان.

+آره اونم میشه به شرطی که به هوا منتقل نشه.

_وردی که می‌خونی چیه؟

+ سلام هوا! هنوز زنده‌ای؟

نهنگ ها موجودات خیلی باهوشی ان ، اما یک دفعه و بی هیچ دلیلی کل گله به سمت ساحل شنا میکنن و از آب بیرون میان . هر چه قدر هم تلاش بکنی دیگه به اب برنمیگردن . دانشمندها مغز نهنگ ها رو بررسی کردن و به نتیجه ی جالبی رسیدن : این که نهنگ ها از ترس غرق شدن ، از آب بیرون میان ؛ اما در واقع توی هوا غرق میشن.........