The Story Archive

Secret Rendezvous

Kōbō Abe · 1977 CE · Novel · Japanese · Contemporary

An ambulance nobody called arrives before dawn and takes away a perfectly healthy woman, and her husband goes after her into a hospital that turns out to be the size of a city and is run on secret recordings of everything said in its corridors. He is engaged as its own investigator and issued transcripts of his search to study. On the staff are a deputy director having himself surgically rebuilt as a horse and a girl whose bones are dissolving.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalSatire
Theme
Isolation & AlienationExistential AbsurdityPower & CorruptionObsession
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanShapeshifterVillain / Tyrant
Plot structure
Labyrinth PlotThe QuestNonlinear / Fractured
Symbol / motif
The LabyrinthThe MachineThe Screen
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
AbsurdistSatirical
Culture / tradition
Japanese

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