The Box Man

"I recently reread this after the editor of the Italian edition of Sympathy Tower Tokyo told me that my work was reminiscent of Kōbō’s. The unhinged premise, the abrupt narrative shifts, the intensely cerebral prose — all these elements are held in such a delicate balance that, when I read it as a student, it brought me a strange sort of comfort. It was the comfort of knowing that, in the realm of fiction least, even our most deranged thoughts are permitted."