Truth from a Lie

This reassessment of some of the major fictional, dramatic, documentary, and critical texts in which Abe worked out his theory of realism in the 1950s and 1960s explores the ways in which the documentarian and the detective became important metaphors in Abe's realist project. It opens up new possibilities for exploring ideas that Abe investigates in virtually all of his significant works: how we 'see,' how we 'know,' and how we ethically engage with alterity.

Margaret S. Key is associate director of the East Asian Studies Center at Indiana University.

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Chapter 1: Investigating the "Concrete Things" of Reality Chapter 3 Chapter 2: Blurring the Boundary between the Fictional and the Real: Ishi no me and "Jiken no haikei" Chapter 4 Chapter 3: True Lies and Dramatized Facts: Mokugekisha andMihitsu no koi Chapter 5 Chapter 4: Memoir, Murder, and the Metafictional Aesthetic in Tanin no kao Chapter 6 Chapter 5: Rethinking Abe: Objectivity as Epistemology, Ethics,and Art