7.2 /10 1 Votes7.2
Translator Maryellen Toman Mori Originally published 1991 Publisher Alfred A. Knopf | 3.6/5 Goodreads ISBN 0-679-42412-1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Original title カンガルー・ノート (Kangarū Nōto) Publication date ca 1977 (Eng. trans. April 1996) Pages 183 pp (Eng. trans. first edition, hardback) Similar Kōbō Abe books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kangaroo notebook
Kangaroo Notebook (カンガルー・ノート, Kangarū Nōto) is a novel written by the Japanese writer Kōbō Abe between ca. 1973 – 1977 and published in 1991.
Contents
Kangaroo notebook credits
Plot summary
One morning, while pondering the stress of his latest assignment at his uninspiring job, the narrator of Kangaroo Notebook feels an itching on his leg that seems to indicate an unusual hair loss. The next morning he wakes to discover that he has daikon radish sprouts emerging from his shins. After battling to be seen in his local medical clinic, he enters a hospital, where a physician prescribes hot-spring therapy in Hell Valley.
Hooked to a penile catheter and an IV bottle, the narrator begins a harrowing journey on his hospital bed through the underworld that seems to lie beneath the city streets. Here, he seeks health not so much as he seeks simple explanations for what is happening to him and the strange people he meets: abusive ferrymen, waiflike child demons, vampire nurses, a chiropractor who runs a karate school and works a sidejob as a euthanist.