The latest addition to my website is Kōbō Abe‘s 燃えつきた地図 (The Ruined Map). On the face if it this is the story of a detective looking for a missing person. Our unnamed detective is working for a woman whose husband – a reliable, conventional man, who had just received a promotion at work – disappeared six months ago. The wife’s brother had investigated and come up with nothing. Our detective does not fare any better. It seems that the area – on the face of it a conventional new suburb in an expanding city – has a lot of crime (prostitution, illegal businesses) but whether the disappearance is connected with that is not clear. The detective is convinced that the various people, including the wife and her brother are lying or withholding information but he can confirm nothing. Gradually, the focus is on the detective, as he is clearly a lost soul and seems to be drifting away from reality, though he is by no means the only lost soul in this book. It is a strange book and more of a psychological novel than a detective novel.