The Face of Another

Kōbō Abe · 1964 CE · Novel · Japanese · Contemporary

A polymer scientist whose face was destroyed by liquid oxygen in his own laboratory lives behind bandages, decides the injury is really the loss of a route to other people, and sets out to build a mask so exact that nobody will read it as one. Wearing it he proposes an experiment on himself: to court his own wife as a stranger. Left as three notebooks for her to read, with the mask documented in the flat register of lab work.

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