When he is badly burned in a laboratory accident, Okuyama must come to terms with the fact that he has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him, and so Okuyama concludes that his only entry back into society is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self that is capable of anything—even having an affair with his own wife. A classic of Japanese literature, this 1964 novel by the author of The Woman in the Dunes exposes the duplicities of an entire world.