I received a copy for free from Bedford/St Martins. I’m pretty sure I am going to hell. I’ve read plenty of Saints lives, and there is one thing about Christian martyrs that puzzles me. If suicide is wrong, then isn’t martyrdom also wrong. Wait, wait. Hear me out. I know lying is wrong too, don’t ge...
Many thanks to the More Historical Than Fiction book club for bringing this book to my attention. The premise of a story of catholic missionaries trying to spread Christianity in Japan really caught my interest because I have fond memories of reading Shogun, which featured a similar premise as a s...
This depressing and mostly tedious book is about a 17th century Portuguese missionary priest in Japan. The topic of Christianity in Japan is in itself is somewhat interesting, I suppose, just because it’s not the type of thing I’d typically read but the book was mostly meh. Some interesting passages...
it's been reported in literary papers or sections that an unofficial "twenty-year rule" applies to the Nobel Prize in Literature-- that is, every twenty years or so (unless it was every twenty-five years, and I'm misremembering), the Nobel Literature Prize committee "has" to award the prize to a Jap...
I'm giving this book 5 stars not because I enjoyed it. More because it's left such a lasting impression and I think it was a book that has shaped the way I think so powerfully that it deserves the rating.A record of torture on American POWs isn't exactly something one can enjoy but it serves as a po...
This is a short novel, only 201 pages, and I read it in just a few hours. The prose is spare, almost minimalist, but that doesn't mean it isn't in the end powerful. The translator in his introduction calls the author Shusaku Endo the "Japanese Graham Greene," and in this work of historical fiction s...
The Sea & poisonby Shusako EndoThe book starts as a prologue, with the visit to a “ shabbily constructed house, more like a shed than a Dr’s surgery” by an unnamed man seeking a Doctor for a routine injection. He meets Dr Suguro, whose faultless technique, but cold distant attitude, piques his curi...
Kiku’s Prayer is set at the moment Japan was reaching out to modernity, in a period of immense fracture, when the nations own view of itself was becoming more divided as it faced a major internal change and also had to confront how it was perceived by the western world. It is at this point that Endo...
okay, not really stunning. what for a catholic writer comes off as "daring, and gripping descent into sin", is for the modern reader, elicts a reaction just one freakin' schoolgirl? . probably more valuable for some theorizing about the nature of artists-- Erich Fromm and the Frankfurt School than ...
This was a melancholic book which I had some trouble connecting with, despite its interesting depictions of Japanese culture. What I did enjoy was the symbolism of the volcano, linking it to human life. The two protagnonists, Jinpei and Father Durand, were both pretty pathetic characters. Jinpei was...
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