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The Silent Cry
Series: Serpent's Tail Classics
Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.
Check link for latest rating. ( 4,551 ratings, 500 reviews)
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Format: Paperback / softback
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See moreJapanese Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe's most important novel.
Japanese Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe's most important novel
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
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feedback is welcome!
Description
It is the 1960s, and the Nedokoro brothers have long-since left their family home in a remote forested valley on Shikoku, in the south of Japan: Mitsusaburo for Tokyo to work as a translator and English professor; his younger brother Takashi for the United States, to atone for his part in anti-American student protests.
Takashi's return to Japan coincides with a local Korean supermarket magnate's offer to buy the brothers' ancestral storehouse, pitting Mitsusaburo and Takashi against one another and dredging up family histories perhaps best forgotten.
The Silent Cry, Oe's dark masterpiece of family psychology, is the most important Japanese novel of the post-war period and a strange, unsettling tale of how the call of blood and history echoes down the generations.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
This novel by Kenzaburo Oe is celebrated for its exploration of human relationships and the complex interplay of knowledge, passions, and dreams in a bewildering world. Critics praise it for its blending of tragedy with a subtle comic thread, indicating its profound artistry. It has been described as an extraordinary work with a unique ability to capture the soul-searching essence of postwar Japan, earning comparisons to Dostoevsky in its depth and range of emotions.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781781255650
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 16 June 2016
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Serpent's Tail
Edition: Main - Classic edition
Contributors:
- Translated by John Bester
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 22.0mm
Width: 128.0mm
Height: 196.0mm
Weight: 230g
Pages: 288
About the Author
Kenzaburo Oe is Japan's most important living writer. Born in 1935 on the island of Shikoku, Oe studied literature at Tokyo University before spending the sixties in Paris where he came under the influence of Sartre. After his debut novel, he wrote a string of books dissecting contemporary Japan, including Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness, Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!, The Pinch Runner Memorandum and the essay collection Hiroshima Notes, on the impact on Japan's national psyche of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.
He lives in Tokyo with his wife and his eldest son Hikari, who was born with severe brain damage; many of the narrators in Oe's fiction have brain-damaged children, most notably in the semi-autobiographical novel A Personal Matter. He won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature.
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