Rendez-vous secret

This wild erotic roller coaster of a novel is one of the most outstanding - and entertaining - works by the great Japanese writer Kobo Abe. Secret Rendezvous chronicles a man's frantic search for his mysteriously vanished wife in a vast underground hospital. As we follow his increasingly bizarre adventures, we encounter a weird group of patients and staff, from the assistant director who resorts to a drastic surgical treatment for his impotence to the sex-crazed thirteen-year-old who suffers from a disease that dissolves her bones. It soon becomes apparent that in this hospital outlandish sex research, ubiquitous surveillance, and an astonishing array of crimes are just part of the routine. With its nightmarish comic vision of modern medicine and modern life, Secret Rendezvous is as distinctive as it is unsettling.