The recently published novel "The Canned Good," published by Al Ain Publishing in 1973, is one of Abe's most famous works and a powerful metaphor for the fragmented self amid Tokyo's rapid economic growth during the 1960s. The novel opens with the first of many photographs scattered throughout the book, this time a negative of a man on the street. Alongside the photograph is a newspaper clipping with the headline: "Ueno Cleared of Homeless; 180 Arrested in Police Sweep This Morning." We then meet the novel's protagonist, who, in an attempt to save himself from spiritual disintegration, resorts to living inside a cardboard box and leading the life of a wandering hermit. Kobo Abe's dystopian world embraces the tropes accepted by detective, adventure, and crime fiction, along with a philosophical rumination on questions of identity and self-image. Perhaps for this reason, the reader finds it difficult to classify Abe's literary world, which oscillates between magical realism, existentialism, and surrealism, constantly throwing his characters out of the ordinary nature of reality, inhabited by secondary players who accept illogical outcomes that do not agree with the premises from which they start.