Kōbō Abe is the pen name of Kimifusa Abe (Kōbō is the Chinese reading of Kimifusa) who was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer and inventor. Born in Tokyo and raised in Manchuria, with roots to the island of Hokkaido from his mother's side, he never felt at home in either of the places and made this sense of rootlessness a major theme in his writings. He became one of Japan's highly acclaimed postwar authors by masterfully portraying haunting visions of people senselessly trapped by modern urban life. He was internationally known, particularly for novels like 'Woman in the Dunes', 'The Face of Another', and 'The Man Without a Map', which were also adapted into films. His novels, short stories, plays and essays were consistently translated into English and Russian, and he was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times.