The Secret Meeting

安部公房 / Tan JinghuaShanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaMar 2026

Rating 4.2
Word count
92K words
Chapters
8
ISBN
9787532798889

Tags

Foreign Literature Suspense ThrillerHuman NatureAlienationPower OppressionJapanese Literature

Summary

"I" was an ordinary man, but when my wife was forcibly taken away by ambulance, I had to go alone to a mysterious hospital to find her. The hospital is fitted with listening devices everywhere, and my every move is somehow known to others. My wife is nowhere to be found, yet I am forced to accept a commission from the half-human, half-horse vice director Ma'er to write notes, and in the course of secret investigation I meet a girl with osteolysis who has long been trapped in the hospital. To rescue the girl from the vice director's control, I am pursued relentlessly and finally cornered in the hospital's maze. Knowing the vice director can hear, I begin shouting into the listening device, admitting that I have become a patient...

Editor's review

The Secret Meeting draws readers into a hospital ordered by surveillance: the protagonist enters to find his wife but gradually loses his outside identity amid listening devices, a commissioned notebook, and layered pursuit, until he can only admit to being a patient into the device. Abe Kobo excels at turning everyday settings into institutionalized mazes; the suspense here advances not through coincidence but through the pressure of others controlling information. The vice director Ma'er and the girl with osteolysis keep "rescue" and "co-optation" entangled, offering both a detective-like inquiry and a cold scrutiny of the individual's situation in modern organizations. Tan Jinghua's translation makes Abe's hard, cool narration accessible to Chinese readers. Best read in one continuous stretch, paying attention to how the two modes of writing/voicing—the "notes" and the "shouts"—change the protagonist's position.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the main thread continuously by chapter first, then revisit the passages where the protagonist writes notes to trace his identity shifts.
  2. While reading, note where listening devices appear and who is listening, to understand how information control drives the plot.
  3. After finishing, compare with other Abe Kobo works on the writing of closed spaces and organizational metaphor.

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

Contents

  1. 版权信息
  2. Digital Lab简介
  3. 笔记之一
  4. 笔记之一（上）
  5. 笔记之一（下）
  6. 笔记之二
  7. 笔记之三
  8. 附记

FAQ

Is this book a mystery novel? It has suspense elements—searching for the wife, secret investigation, and pursuit—but the focus is not on solving a case but on how the protagonist's identity is rewritten through being surveilled, commissioned, and hunted. Reading it as social allegory or avant-garde fiction fits the text's mode of progression better.
I haven't read Abe Kobo—can I read this directly? Yes. The book's length and setting are relatively concentrated, with the main line being the protagonist's experiences after entering the hospital to find his wife, and it does not depend on prior works. On first reading, don't rush to explain every symbol; first follow the narrative to confirm who is listening, who is in control, and why the protagonist finally admits to being a patient.
What should I pay special attention to while reading? Note the two modes of expression: the "notes" and the "shouting into the listening device." The former is commissioned writing; the latter is public admission after knowing one is overheard, and together they mark the protagonist's slide from investigator to patient. Grasping this line makes the hospital maze and character relationships clearer.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

安部公房 Author

Kobo Abe is a highly representative writer in modern Japanese literature, and his works have a steady readership in the Chinese-speaking world as well. The library holds nine of his works, including The Woman in the Dunes, The Box Man, The Secret Rendezvous, The Wall, and the four-volume Kobo Abe Works Series, which together sketch the core profile of his writing. Because personal details such as his dates of birth and death and nationality are not specified in the library records, public information is limited, so no biographical narrative is given here. Judging from the common categories "social novel, foreign literature, and social science," his writing often takes ordinary people's situations as its entry point and, through parable-like scenarios, examines individual identity anxiety, alienation, and existential predicaments in modern society. Works such as The Woman in the Dunes and The Box Man especially embody this narrative style poised between reality and abstraction, with concise plots and striking imagery that draw readers in with suspense while leaving thought-provoking space. His works have attracted attention in Japan and abroad and continue to influence later literary and intellectual discussion, making them suitable for readers willing to explore the relationship between society and the self through story.

Tan Jinghua Author · China · 1951

Tan Jinghua was born in Shanghai in June 1951. He holds a doctorate in literature and is a professor and doctoral supervisor at Shanghai International Studies University, where he formerly served as executive vice president. He has long been engaged in the study and translation of modern Japanese literature. His publications include a biography of Kawabata Yasunari and A History of Modern Japanese Literature, and he has translated more than 140 major works of Japanese literature. His representative translations include Kawabata Yasunari's Snow Country, The Izu Dancer, The Old Capital, Thousand Cranes, and The Sound of the Mountain, as well as the Selected Works of Kawabata Yasunari and the four-volume Abe Kobo series, and Natsume Soseki's Light and Darkness. He is a former president of the Chinese Association for Japanese Literature and of the Shanghai Translators Association. His works are generally classified under essays and miscellaneous writings and foreign literature, and he has had a broad influence in the translation and introduction of modern and contemporary Japanese literature.