Friends

Kōbō Abe · 1967 CE · Play · Japanese · Contemporary

A man living alone is called on by a family of eight — grandmother, parents, three daughters, two sons — who let themselves in, diagnose his solitude as an illness, and begin cooking, tidying and dividing the room among themselves. They are unfailingly courteous, they insist they are there only out of love, and every authority he appeals to, from the police to his own fiancée, finds them charming. Awarded the Tanizaki Prize.

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