A vision of contemporary Japanese society that manages to be simultaneously fearful and jarringly funny. At the center of the story is a gentle, self-effacing man who contracts a disorder that makes him a vegetable, and he becomes the victim of forces that alternately torture him, fuss over him, and neglect him. This last novel written before its author's death in 1993 marries magic realism to social satire and ends up with unexpected meaning | Kangaroo Notebook by Kobo Abe, Paperback | Indigo Chapters