A review by spacestationtrustfund
The Frontier Within: Essays by Abe Kobo by Kōbō Abe

3.0

A collection of various essays of varying quality written over the course of Abé Kôbô's life. Some were absolutely incomprehensible, while others were absolutely fascinating. One interesting detail that I particularly liked was from the introduction, which discussed the fact that Abé was often motivated by criticising the concept of nationality as a form of categorisation, particularly in regards to writers, i.e., Abé himself was a "Japanese writer," but his argument was that to think of someone as such is to assume or even outright imply that there is such a thing as a universal quality amongst all Japanese writers (or Japanese people in general). This is something I myself agree with, so it was pretty cool to see reflected in the opinion of someone I admire greatly.