The Face of Another

Overview

Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident–a man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him. His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self–a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity and the social contract, The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.

Details

Publisher

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Published

1966

Pages

237

Language

EN

Categories

Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Psychological, Fiction / Magical Realism, Fiction / World Literature / Asia (General), Literary Criticism / General

ISBN-13

9780375726538