Kenzaburō Ōe is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature, with works deeply influenced by French and American literary traditions and theory. His writing grapples with political, social, and philosophical concerns, notably nuclear weapons, social non-conformism, and existentialism. Ōe crafted "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." His prose is marked by profound explorations of the human condition.
From Nobel Prize winner Oe comes the story of Marie Kuraki, a Japanese woman with a smile like Betty Boop's, who has become a saint to a group of Mexican farm workers. Although Marie is an unbeliever in search of spiritual peace, she embarks on a journey prompted by a series of personal tragedies, including the deaths of her husband and sons.
Edited by one of Japan's leading and internationally acclaimed writers, this collection of short stories was compiled to mark the fortieth anniversary of the August 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here some of Japan's best and most representative writers chronicle and re-create the impact of this tragedy on the daily lives of peasants, city professionals, artists, children, and families. From the "crazy" iris that grows out of season to the artist who no longer paints in color, the simple details described in these superbly crafted stories testify to the enormity of change in Japanese life, as well as in the future of our civilization. Included are "The Crazy Iris" by Masuji Ibuse, "Summer Flower" by Tamiki Hara, "The Land of Heart's Desire" by Tamiki Hara, "Human Ashes" by Katsuzo Oda, "Fireflies" by Yoka Ota, "The Colorless Paintings" by Ineko Sata, "The Empty Can" by Kyoko Hayashi, "The House of Hands" by Mitsuharu Inoue, and "The Rite" by Hiroko Takenishi.
Prize Stock, the first of the novels included in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, depicts the relationship between a Japanese boy and a black American airman captured during the second world war. Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, the title story, is a semi-autobiographical account of a father coming to terms with his brain-damaged son. Aghwee The Sky Monster is about a young man's first job - chaperoning a banker's son. In The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away, the narrator lies on his hospital bed eagerly waiting to die of cancer.
"Two brothers, Takashi and Mitsu, return from Tokyo to the village of their childhood. Selling their family home leads them to an inescapable confrontation with their family history. Their attempt to escape the influence of the city ends in failure as they realize that its tentacles extend to everything in the countryside, including their own relationship."--Amazon.com
Kenzaburō Ōe, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, is internationally acclaimed as one of the most important and influential post-World War II writers, known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and his own struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son. The Swedish Academy lauded Ōe for his "poetic force [that] creates an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." His most personal book, A Personal Matter, is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child.
Kenzaburo Oe is one of the world's finest writers, and in Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! he delivers a virtuoso novel of extraordinary power, touching on his familiar themes of family, responsibility, the nature of literary inspiration, and the unique nature of parenting a disabled child.
Late in his life, writer Kogito Choko reconnects with his estranged friend, the filmmaker Goro Hanawa. Goro's subsequent suicide causes Kogito to examine and reexamine Goro's life for clues that will lead him to understand his friend's path.
A Quiet Life is an uncanny blend of the real with the imagined, of memoir with fiction. A Quiet Life is narrated by Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old woman. Her father is a famous and fascinating novelist; her older brother, though severely brain damaged, possesses an almost magical gift for musical composition; and her mother's life is devoted to the care of them both. Ma-chan and her younger brother find themselves emotionally on the outside of this oddly constructed nuclear family. But when her father accepts a visiting professorship from an American university, Ma-chan finds herself suddenly the head of the household and at the center of family relationships that she must begin to redefine.
Writing a novel after having won a Nobel Prize for Literature must be even more daunting than trying to follow a brilliant, bestselling debut. In Somersault (the title refers to an abrupt, public renunciation of the past), Kenzaburo Oe has himself leapt in a new direction, rolling away from the slim, semi-autobiographical novel that garnered the 1994 Nobel Prize (A Personal Matter) and toward this lengthy, involved account of a Japanese religious movement. Although it opens with the perky and almost picaresque accidental deflowering of a young ballerina with an architectural model, Somersault is no laugh riot. Oe's slow, deliberate pace sets the tone for an unusual exploration of faith, spiritual searching, group dynamics, and exploitation. His lavish, sometimes indiscriminate use of detail can be maddening, but it also lends itself to his sobering subject matter, as well as to some of the most beautiful, realistic sex scenes a reader is likely to encounter. --Regina Marler
