Beasts Head for Home

In this early novel from Japan’s master surrealist, Abe (The Box Man) casts a young man’s journey home as an agonizing exploration of the depths of human suffering. Three years after the surrender of Japan in World War II, Kyuzo escapes from his hometown in Manchuria amidst the Chinese Civil War. He yearns for his ancestral homeland of Japan, a place he has only ever “imagined from his textbooks.” His train is derailed in the fighting, and he is led away from the wreckage on a treacherous march through the countryside by a man named Ko. They are soon lost in the “endless repetition of stones, ditches, withered grasses, and swelling hills” and only survive due to “a beastlike visceral impulse.” The bulk of the novel is taken up by this journey, its every trial chronicled with riveting ferocity by Abe. Kyuzo wonders, “Could anyone promise that human beings were less cruel than nature?” This novel is an excellent entry point into Abe’s writing, with much of his signature tone and style. He is a master of controlling the reader’s emotional investment while crafting an increasingly suffocating atmosphere of dread, resulting in a devastating reading experience. (May)