Kenzaburo oe, Overstock.com in Books & Magazines

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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. Reprint.

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Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! is a virtuoso novel hailed as "a dark jewel" (The Village Voice) and "a dazzlingly unconventional fiction ... capable of frequently reducing the reader to helpless (albeit grateful) tears" (Kirkus Reviews). Wise and illuminating, it is a masterpiece from one of the world's finest writers, Kenzaburo Oe -- winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. K is a famous writer living in Tokyo with his wife and three children, one of whom is mentally disabled. K's wife confronts him with the information that this child, Eeyore, has been doing disturbing things -- behaving aggressively, asserting that he's dead, even brandishing a knife at his mother -- and K, given to retreating from reality into abstraction, looks for answers in his lifelong love of William Blake's poetry. As K struggles to understand his family and assess his responsibilities within it, he must also reevaluate himself -- his relationship with his own father, the political stances he has taken, the duty of artists and writers in society. A remarkable portrait of the inexpressible bond between this father and his damaged son, Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! is the work of an unparalleled writer at his sparkling best. "An intimate investigation of love, responsibility, and the nature of inspiration, from one of world literature's most original voices." -- Fionn Meade, The Seattle Times "Notable for [its] piercing emotional honesty ... A hopeful book." -- John Freeman, The Dallas Morning News "Oe's voice resounds in every sentence, making for rewarding-if melancholy-reading." -- Andrew Ervin, The Philadelphia Inquirer

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This collection of short stories was compiled to mark the fortieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

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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, both immediately after the atomic blast and in the years to come, reveals the horrific extent of the devastation wrought. In Hiroshima Notes, Oe offers a sensitive portrayal of the people of the city - the 'human face' in the midst of atomic destruction. The lives Oe describes and his insights into the nature of human dignity are an indictment of the Nuclear Age as powerful as the ruins in the Hiroshima Peace Park.

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Oe's dark musings on moral failure have come to symbolize an alienated generation in postwar Japan. This novel recounts the exploits of 15 teenage reformatory boys evacuated to a remote mountain village in wartime. When plague breaks out, the villagers flee, leaving the boys blockaded inside the empty village. The boys' brief, doomed attempt to build autonomous lives of self-respect, love, and tribal valor fails in the face of death and the adult nightmare of war.

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"A Quiet Life" is narrated by Ma-chan, a young woman who at the age of 20 gets caught up in an unusual family situation. Her father is a famous novelist; her older brother is brain-damaged but possesses a gift for music; and her mother's life is devoted to caring for them both. When her father is offered a visiting professorship in an American university, Ma-chan finds herself at the center of family relationships that she must begin to redefine.

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