Winning the Yomiuri Prize for T he Woman in the Dunes in 1962, Kōbō Abe is widely considered one of Japan’s finest novelists.

Photo: Amazon The Woman in the Dunes – Kōbō Abe (1962) It follows the life of Yossarian, a bombardier who struggles to navigate the bureaucratic, hilarious rule of his perilous service: “a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved.” An absurdist satire of war, Heller’s reimagining of the post-war novel has become a cornerstone of American culture. One of the world’s most well-known phrases “Catch-22” originated from the namesake book written by Joseph Heller, which is set on a fictional island in Italy during the Second World War. Photo: Penguin Books Catch-22 – Joseph Heller (1961) A work that slips between autobiography and fiction, the novel functions as a deeply mesmerizing mediation on the human condition: on sex, love, despair, loneliness, and art. “First-person, uncensored, formless – fuck everything!”įollowing through on his promise, Tropic of Cancer is an unruly, infectiously written book, following Miller’s life as a struggling writer in Paris during the 1920s-30s. “I start tomorrow on the Paris book,” wrote Henry Miller. All he had going for him was creative rage, mixed with the artistic vision of the truly avant-garde. In a review by The Guardian, Henry Miller’s life before he released Tropic of Cancer, his debut novel, was: “the quintessence of abject failure.

Photo: Amazon Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller (1961)

The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe