The Ark Sakura is the story of a man who has built a modern, computer-equipped "ark," capable of surviving a nuclear war, within a vast, hidden underground quarry in Japan. The excerpt printed here revolves around the builder's search for passengers to join him in his bizarre refuge.
The Ark Sakura is the most recent of Japanese writer Kobo Abe's books to be translated into English. The novel was published in Japan in 1984 and translated last March. The translator, Juliet Winters Carpenter, lives in Japan with her family. Her translation of a previous novel by Abe, Secret Rendezvous, won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature in 1980.
Abe is the author of many books and plays, among them The Woman in the Dunes (1964), The Ruined Map (1969), The Box Man (1974), and Secret Rendezvous (1979). Following the excerpt in this issue are commentaries on the style and vision of this unusual writer. Original illustrations by Emiko Ozaki, a Japanese artist, accompany the excerpt and commentaries.
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