As a brigade of old men, a band of school girls, and a group of wayward youths all come to occupy the hull of the 'ark,' Mole is forced to abandon his creation, his sanctum breached and his heart broken by the female sakura who rejects his advances. But his fantasy of having power over the other residents of the 'ark' unwinds as matters become more and more complex. Mole comes to accept the presence of the two shills in exchange for their help in repelling the intruders. After chasing the pair of them back to the ark, Mole and the insect dealer discover that the shills are not the only intruders: other unseen, unwelcome people have been prowling the dark corridors as well. When Mole offers the insect dealer a ticket aboard his ark, it is stolen by the shills.

The insect dealer has two shills, or sakura as they are known in Japanese, working for him, one an aggressive, impulsive young man, and the other a sly but attractive woman. His eye is caught by a man selling insects called clockbugs. The novel begins with the protagonist, who calls himself Mole, going to a flea market in order to find people to live aboard his 'ark,' an abandoned mine that he has outfitted so that it will withstand the nuclear holocaust that he predicts is imminent. The novel was originally published in 1984 the English translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter was released in 1988. The novel's protagonist is a recluse who, convinced that the world will end soon, takes up residence in an abandoned mine and then attempts to sell tickets to his 'ark' to people he deems worthy of saving from the apocalypse.

The Ark Sakura (方舟さくら丸 Hakobune Sakura-maru) is a novel by the Japanese novelist Kōbō Abe.

The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe