The Face of Another
Kobo Abe
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
<p>Like an elegantly chilling postscript to <b>The Metamorphosis</b><i>,</i> 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. <br><br>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,<i> </i><b>The Face of Another</b> is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.<br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>