Kobo Abe is perhaps the most famous Japanese writer of the second half of the 20th century in Russia, his works have been published in our four-volume collection of works. But not in this four-volume first novel of the author, "The Fourth Ice Age", a fantastic novel, dystopia on the traditional theme of the death of Japan, was translated and published in Moscow in 1965 - and reprinted for the first time. It was this novel that paved the way for our reader for “Woman in the Sand” and “Entering the Ark” It was in it that the author and translator achieved the highest creative unity: Arkady Strugatsky acted as the translator of the book ..