Kangaruu noto

by Abe Kōbō

At breakfast one morning, the narrator of Kangaroo Notebook discovers to his horror that what appear to be radish sprouts are growing out of his shins. Thus begins Kobo Abe's strange and wonderful last novel, completed not long before his death in 1993, and set in a skewed version of modern urban Japan. Funny and terrifying by turns, it is the story of an ordinary man in the grip of bizarre and thoroughly extraordinary forces - a self-propelled hospital bed that takes him literally to the edge of hell, doctors eager to cure the wrong ailments, mysterious windstorms, a nurse devoted to taking blood (her monthly quota is about three quarts), infant ghosts, and an American known as Master Hammer Killer who is making a film called Fatal Accidents.