Books in the Weatherhead Books on Asia series

Fu Ping is a keenly observed portrait of the lives of lower-class women in Shanghai in the early years of the People's Republic of China. Wang Anyi, one of contemporary China's most acclaimed authors, explores the daily lives of migrants from rural areas and other people on the margins of urban life.

Abe Kobo (1924-1993) was one of Japan's greatest postwar writers, widely recognized for his imaginative science fiction and plays of the absurd. However, he also wrote theoretical criticism for which he is lesser known, merging literary, historical, and philosophical perspectives into keen reflections on the nature of creativity, the evolution of the human species, and an impressive range of other subjects. Abe Kobo tackled contemporary social issues and literary theory with the depth and facility of a visionary thinker. Featuring twelve essays from his prolific career-including "e;Poetry and Poets (Consciousness and the Unconscious),"e; written in 1944, and "e;The Frontier Within, Part II,"e; written in 1969-this anthology introduces English-speaking readers to Abe Kobo as critic and intellectual for the first time. Demonstrating the importance of his theoretical work to a broader understanding of his fiction-and a richer portrait of Japan's postwar imagination-Richard F. Calichman provides an incisive introduction to Abe Kobo's achievements and situates his essays historically and intellectually.

This book brings together the essay collection "Written in the margins of life (Xie zai ren sheng bian shang)" and the short story collection "Human, beast, ghost (Ren shou gui)."