[Abé is] concerned with the solitude of men and women alienated from contemporary society and suffering from a loss of identity…. [Abé has deliberately deviated] from the dominant trend of the prewar Japanese novels. [He is] … completely free from the sentimentality of self-commiseration characteristic of the I-novelists…. [His prose style is also a mark of his] deviation from the Japanese tradition. Abé's style is objective, logical and lucid…. Abé's literary world has a closer kinship with that of Kafka and some contemporary European writers than that of his countrymen. (pp. 153-54)

From the point of view of literary technique Abé explored a new and unique possibility for prose fiction in his 'The Wall: The Crime of Mr S. Karuma' ('Kabe—S. Karuma shi no Hanzai', 1951)…. This story is concerned with the metamorphosis of human beings…. [His work bears] a resemblance to Kafka's Metamorphosis, where the technique...