The villagers offer to let the protagonist escape if he has sex in public, but when he tries to force the title character to do so she punches him in the stomach and bloodies his nose, after which the protagonist returns to shoveling sand.  
The last person to see the protagonist of this work was a station employee, who mistook him for a mountain climber with a painting set.  One of his colleagues is an amateur psychoanalyst who claims that the protagonist's hobby indicates an Oedipus complex, but after seven years the protagonist is declared dead in compliance with section 30 of the civil code.  At one point the protagonist, who isn't really dead, sets up a crow trap using a piece of fish for bait, and ends up collecting fresher water than he is used to drinking.  The villagers offer to let the protagonist escape if he has sex in public, but when he tries to force the title character to do so she punches him in the stomach and bloodies his nose, after which the protagonist returns to shoveling sand.  FTP name this novel about amateur entomologist Niki Jumpei, a retelling of the legend of Sisyphus written by Kobo Abe.
The last person to see the protagonist of this work was a station employee, who mistook him for a mountain climber with a painting set.  
The Woman in the Dunes (or: Suna no Onna)