Author: Oe Kenzaburo
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Teach us to outgrow our madness : four short novels
Kenzaburo Oe was ten when American soldiers entered his mountain village during World War II, and his writing “reveals the tension and ambiguity forged by the collapse of the values of his childhood on the one hand and the confrontation with American writers on the other…[His] heroes have been expelled from the certainty of childhood,…
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A personal matter.
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Nip the buds, shoot the kids
In Japan during World War II a group of boys who are evacuated to the country take over a village when the inhabitants flee a plague. The novel describes the way the boys administer the village-breaking into homes for food, burying the dead, caring for the sick-and what happens when the villagers return. By the…
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Hiroshima notes
Hiroshima Notes is a moving statement from Japan’s most celebrated living writer on the meaning of the Hiroshima bombing and its terrible legacy. Kenzaburo Oe’s account of the lives of the many victims of Hiroshima – the young, the old, women and children – and the valiant efforts of the doctors who care for them,…
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A quiet life
A Japanese novelist and his wife move to America, leaving the children behind. It befalls to the eldest daughter to look after a younger sister and a handicapped brother. The novel is a memoir of her experience.
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Rouse up o young men of the new age!
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.
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Somersault : a novel
Ten years after recanting their teachings and abandoning their zealous and violent congregation, two men known only as the Patron and Guide of Humankind seek to overcome a radical faction while leading peaceful followers toward a new future.
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The changeling
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.
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Two novels : Seventeen, J
Two views of a world whose traditional values have been blown away: Seventeen, the story of a lonely boy who turns to a right-wing group for self-esteem, and J, the story of a spoiled young drifter son of a Japanese executive.
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The pinch runner memorandum