Weirdest book I have ever read by far. An industrial toilet, a bug salesman, and an old people cleaning cult walk into a quarry.

"... မဟုတ္ဘူး။ ဒါက အသက္ရွင္က်န္ရစ္ဖို႔အတြက္ လက္မွတ္ပဲ။ ေသတၱာကိုဖြင့္ၿပီး ခင္ဗ်ားဘာသာ ၾကည့္ၾကည့္ပါလား"
"... ဘယ္ကေန အသက္ရွင္က်န္ရစ္ရမွာလဲ"
"ကပ္ဆိုးႀကီးေပါ့"
"ဘယ္က ကပ္ဆိုးႀကီးလဲ"
"ေနပါဦး.. အခု က်ဳပ္တို႔ ကပ္ဆိုးႀကီးတစ္ခုရဲ႕ ႏႈတ္ခမ္း၀မွာေရာက္ေနတယ္လုိ႔ ခင္ဗ်ားက မထင္ဘူးလား။ သဘာ၀ပတ္၀န္းက်င္၊ လူသားမ်ဳိးႏြယ္၊ ကမၻာေျမ၊ အို.. ေလာကႀကီးတစ္ခုလံုး"
"အမွန္အတိုင္း ေျပာရရင္ေတာ့ ထင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ က်ဳပ္ရဲ႕အထင္ေၾကာင့္ ဘာမ်ားေျပာင္းလဲသြားမွာမို႔လို႔လဲ"
"... လာပါ။ ခင္ဗ်ားကို ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ျပစရာရွိတယ္"

ကၽြန္ေတာ္က မတ္တပ္ရပ္ၿပီး ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ေနာက္ကို လိုက္ခဲ့ဖို႔ သူ႔ကို အခ်က္ျပလိုက္တယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ ပိုးမႊားေရာင္းသူက သူ႔ေနရာက မထဘူး။
လက္မွတ္ေသတၱာကို မထိသလို သူထိုင္ေနတဲ့ေနရာကလည္း တစ္ဖ၀ါးမွ မေရြ႕ဘူး။
"အဲဒါမ်ဳိးက က်ဳပ္ရဲ႕ ပံုစံမဟုတ္ဘူး။ လူထုဆႏၵျပပြဲတုိ႔ ဘာတို႔ေလ။ က်ဳပ္က အရာရာဟာ သူ႔သေဘာသူေဆာင္သြားလိမ့္မယ္လို႔ပဲ သေဘာထားတတ္တဲ့ လူစားမ်ဳိး"
"ဒါေပမဲ့ တျခားလူေတြအေၾကာင္း ခင္ဗ်ားကို ဘယ္သူကမွ ပူခိုင္းမေနဘူးေလ။ ဒီလက္မွတ္က ခင္ဗ်ားအတြက္ သီးသန္႔ပဲ"

"ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္။ က်ဳပ္ကေတာ့ လက္လႊတ္လိုက္ေတာ့မယ္။ တျခားလူေတြအသက္မရွင္ႏိုင္တဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ အသက္ရွင္က်န္ရေအာင္ က်ဳပ္က ဘာေကာင္မို႔လို႔လဲ။
ေတာင္းဆိုခ်က္မ်ားလြန္းတာဟာလည္း ဒုစရိုက္မႈပဲ မဟုတ္ဘူးလား။

တျခားလူေတြအသက္မရွင္ႏိုင္တဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာ အသက္ရွင္က်န္ရေအာင္ က်ဳပ္က ဘာေကာင္မို႔လို႔လဲတဲ့။
ဒီလူေျပာတဲ့စကားက အခ်က္ေတာ့ က်တယ္။ သူက ကၽြန္ေတာ့္ရဲ႕ ေပ်ာ့ကြက္ကို ဖမ္းမိသြားတာပဲ။

@The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe

I'm really failing to come to terms with what I do and do not like about this book.

On the one hand you have a splendid setup. Our protagonist is handyman/photographer/social recluse Mole (but never Hog - there is a great aside about why this name is so repellant to him), captain of the Ark. The ark is in fact an abandoned quarry of blue stone inside a mountain that Mole has converted into a labyrinth of clever storage spaces, vicious booby traps, and a refuge from impending nuclear war. On an ill-fated attempt to recruit crew members for the passage across impending doomsday, Mole goes uptown to a brick-a-brack fair. There he meets the Insect Seller, peddling Eupcaccia (a little beetle used to tell the time that travels in a circle, slowly eating its own excrement)(definitely not something the insect seller made up by pulling legs off a different bug). He is conned into a purchase by the Insect Dweller's associates: shills or sakura.
Thereafter follows a desparate chase back to his bunker where the sakura may have gained entry.

This first part of the novel where we are introduced to the cast, is formidable. The dialogue is strange but moreish. In my notes I wrote that the dialogue feels like something out of an anime. It's hard to know if this is just projection because I know that Abe is Japanese, or virtue of the translation but either way it has that same appeal: odd, overly dramatic, always leading to a new sensationlist plotline. The first scene where the cast meet and discuss buying bugs is gripping. Their character is immediately revealed: the old hand, the brazen crafty shill, the bit-on-the-side, and Mole.

A side note about the only female character, she's held up as bait for men from the beginning. She's constantly fondled, handled, and infantilised. She serves as an early metaphor for the power struggle that takes place within the ark. As Mole says: the one who controls the women controls the group. It's tedious, honestly. Is this commentary on Mole? On Japan in the 80's? On women? I don't think it's the latter because Abe's overweight narrator is handled pretty well but then again one need not discriminate with equality..
It reminded me of Murakami actually - so if you can look past his misogyny you will survive here too.

So we have a cast and a setting: what happens next? Well.. everything and nothing. The next part of the book takes place inside the arc and a lot of the fun of it is exploring the setup. The rest of it is a power struggle where our socially inept Mole can't seem to manage the simple manipulations of the cockroaches in his home. There's also a lot of focus on a giant toilet. Too much focus.
Things start getting silly when more people enter the story and for the last third I was pretty checked out.

So what to say of this book? Well for one it is NOT science fiction, so I don't know why it's included in the Penguin Classics Science Fiction collection. There isn't a hint of science in the whole thing. It reads more like absurdist/speculative, but even that seems generous because I cannot figure out what allegories lurk within.

Should you read it? Yeah, I think so. At least the first half. After that, unless you're really into the satire part of it, I'm not sure there;s a lot to learn. But the setting is very cool.

This book ended up being a let down. For the first quarter I was convinced it would be a five-star read. I have another book by Abe that I am looking forward to reading but this one lost its way in the tunnels.


An abadoned quarry in Gunmo, Japan.

• THE ARK SAKURA by Kobo Abe, tr. by Juliet Winters Carpenter, 1984/1988.

People on society's margins - an underground "ark" bomb shelter.

Weird. Dark. Disturbing.

Science fiction in neon lighting

The story reminded me of Ryu Murakami's depictions of Tokyo: brash, bright, and unnerving. This extraordinary tale of armageddon is full of strange characters and an equally weird location: a haven within a mountain. There is a lot of slapstick humour running alongside the dystopian vision

Excellent food for thought with a very bizarre allegory at its core!

An absurdist masterpiece centered on hoaxes, sales pitches, and toilets.

Read this slowly, over the course of many nights, sometimes only reading a single page, before turning out the light and going to sleep. The characters are all trying to sell something, they're all withholding something, they're all a bunch of losers who wind up in a hole in the ground, and there they find some kind of place for themselves, for the thing that they're selling to be superseded by their reason for selling it, that in some way their original intention has been twisted by the world they live in but in this hole, in this Ark, they can survive the flood, the disaster, the event. It's not ha-ha funny but funny, like destroying your home to get your foot unstuck from a giant toilet is funny, like Woody not getting the Far Side. Maybe there's something in there about the looming specter of nuclear war that haunts so much post-war Japanese art and how Mole dumping so many chemicals into who knows where should be a larger concern, but like all human concerns, is just the hubris of an idiot in the end, we can't choose what we're afraid of even as we're committing new damages that the world will have to shelter from. Sure the book has its flaws and overall feels uneven but it was smart-dumb in a way that I enjoyed quite a bit.

سرگیجه گرفتم. کاش آخرش بمب اتم می‌خورد توی پناهگاه و همشون پودر میشدن. شاید هدف کوبو آبه رساندن یک سری مفاهیم اگزیستانسیالیستی بوده باشه؛ من که چیزی دستگیرم نشد

Es ist faszinierend, wie Kobo Abe es immer wieder schafft, einen in seine surrealen Welten hineinzuziehen und wie einem seine total skurrilen Charaktere immer wieder ans Herz wachsen.

Allein die Gedankengänge des Hauptcharakters zu lesen war SEHR lustig für mich. Und die Charaktere sind einfach perfekt. The Shill, The Insect Dealer, Inototsu und "the Woman" :D

Seit "The Woman in the Dunes" bin ich totaler Kobo Abe Fan :)

A fantastic rumination on the end of the world, sprinkled with such strange touches as a legless beetle that subsists entirely on its own excrement. The peccadilloes of modern Japanese society viewed through an almost Ballardian lens. Highly recommended among the works of Abe.

Reading this book was a challenge itself. The begging seemed to be quite promising, strange set of characters in an even more strange place. Unfortunately the rest of the story consisted of misogyny and a plot that wasn’t really going anywhere interesting.