The 1973 novel was written by Kobo Abe and follows a nameless man who gives up his identity to live with a large cardboard box over his head, encountering a range of characters as he wanders the streets of Tokyo。
Isolated on the fringes of a soulless metropolis, Catherine survives on scraps of translation work. But a mysterious client offers a lucrative job, and an opportunity for Catherine to indulge in her malformed and incompatible desires.