Search results for ""author shusaku endo""

'Endo is one of the world's greatest novelists' Washington PostA group of Japanese tourists journey to the sacred River Ganges, each on a secret personal pilgrimage. Widower Isobe mourns for the devoted wife he neglected; gentle children's writer Numanda seeks out the bird he believes saved his life; Kiguchi is haunted by his time as a soldier along the Highway of Death; and Mitsuko reconnects with the classmate she tempted away from the church and cruelly discarded.At the softly lapping shores of the river - where the faithful come to bathe during their final moments - self-knowledge is sought and memories put to rest. Set against a rich backdrop of 90s India, Deep River is a beautifully moving story showing Endo at the height of his powers as a chronicler of religious experience.Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.Translated by Van C. Ge

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'Flawless' – David Mitchell'A masterpiece’ – Daily TelegraphWinner of the Tanizaki PrizePublished in 1967 in Japan to huge controversy, Silence is Shusaku Endo's most highly acclaimed novel and a classic of its genre.Father Rodrigues is an idealistic Portuguese Jesuit priest who, in the 1640s, sets sail for Japan on a determined mission to help the brutally oppressed Japanese Christians. He must also discover the truth behind unthinkable rumours that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith. Once faced with the realities of religious persecution Rodrigues himself is forced to make an impossible choice: whether to abandon his flock or his God.As empathetic as it is powerful, Silence is an astonishing exploration of faith and suffering and an award-winning classic.Now a major film directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Liam Neeson, Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield.<

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In novels such as Silence, Endō Shūsaku examined the persecution of Japanese Christians in different historical eras. Sachiko, set in Nagasaki in the painful years between 1930 and 1945, is the story of two young people trying to find love during yet another period in which Japanese Christians were accused of disloyalty to their country.In the 1930s, two young Japanese Christians, Sachiko and Shūhei, are free to play with American children in their neighborhood. But life becomes increasingly difficult for them and other Christians after Japan launches wars of aggression. Meanwhile, a Polish Franciscan priest and former missionary in Nagasaki, Father Maximillian Kolbe, is arrested after returning to his homeland. Endō alternates scenes between Nagasaki—where the growing love between Sachiko and Shūhei is imperiled by mounting persecution—and Auschwitz, where the priest has been sent. Shūhei’s dilemma deepens when he faces conscription into the Japanese military, conflicting with the Christian belief that killing is a sin. With the A-bomb attack on Nagasaki looming in the distance, Endō depicts ordinary people trying to live lives of faith in a wartime situation that renders daily life increasingly unbearable. Endō’s compassion for his characters, reflecting their struggles to find and share love for others, makes Sachiko one of his most moving novels.

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Scandal has justly become one of the most internationally successful novels by Shusaku Endo, not only because of the fascinating image it offers of the pleasure districts of Tokyo, but also because of the depth with which it paints the issue of individual identity, as well as the allusion to Edgar Allan Poe's black cat or the presence of anonymous phone calls, which have made rivers of ink flow and which have been identified as antecedents of certain motifs in the most current Japanese narrative. Through the story of Suguro, a Catholic writer (like Endo himself), and his encounter with Naruse, a middle-aged widow who used to be sexually aroused by her husband's accounts of brutalities during his time as a soldier in China . Shusaku Endo confronts the reader with an astonishing conception of sadomasochism and sexual life in a very broad sense.

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Eleven short, deeply spiritual stories ranging from autobiographical serendipities to solemn, empathetic parables. The title story is set during the 18th-century Shogunate persecution of Christians in Japan.

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In October 1613, four samurai set sail for Mexico, accompanied by a Spanish priest who was supposed to act as interpreter. The purpose of this unprecedented mission was to negotiate commercial privileges with the Western world; in return, European missionaries would be allowed to preach Christianity in Japan. However, when their project failed, the emissaries continued their journey to Spain and Italy and were the first Japanese to set foot on European soil. A milestone in 20th century Japanese novels, The Samurai is a profound exploration of faith, frailty, ambition and loyalty, all of which Endo tackled with unparalleled wit and brilliance.

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In novels such as Silence, Endō Shūsaku examined the persecution of Japanese Christians in different historical eras. Sachiko, set in Nagasaki in the painful years between 1930 and 1945, is the story of two young people trying to find love during yet another period in which Japanese Christians were accused of disloyalty to their country.In the 1930s, two young Japanese Christians, Sachiko and Shūhei, are free to play with American children in their neighborhood. But life becomes increasingly difficult for them and other Christians after Japan launches wars of aggression. Meanwhile, a Polish Franciscan priest and former missionary in Nagasaki, Father Maximillian Kolbe, is arrested after returning to his homeland. Endō alternates scenes between Nagasaki—where the growing love between Sachiko and Shūhei is imperiled by mounting persecution—and Auschwitz, where the priest has been sent. Shūhei’s dilemma deepens when he faces conscription into the Japanese military, conflicting with the Christian belief that killing is a sin. With the A-bomb attack on Nagasaki looming in the distance, Endō depicts ordinary people trying to live lives of faith in a wartime situation that renders daily life increasingly unbearable. Endō’s compassion for his characters, reflecting their struggles to find and share love for others, makes Sachiko one of his most moving novels.

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Kiku's Prayer is told through the eyes of Kiku, a self-assured young woman from a rural Japanese village who falls in love with Seikichi, a devoted Catholic man. Practicing a faith still banned by the government, Seikichi is imprisoned but refuses to recant under torture. Kiku's efforts to reconcile her feelings for Seikichi's religion with the sacrifices she makes to free him mirror the painful, conflicting choices Japan faced as a result of exposure to modernity and the West. Seikichi's persecution exemplifies Japan's insecurities, and Kiku's tortured yet determined spirit represents the nation's resilient soul. Set in the turbulent years of the transition from the shogunate to the Meiji Restoration, Kiku's Prayer embodies themes central to Endo Shusaku's work, including religion, modernization, and the endurance of the human spirit. Yet this novel is much more than a historical allegory. It acutely renders one woman's troubled encounter with passion and spirituality at a transitional time in her life and in the history of her people. A renowned twentieth-century Japanese author, Endo wrote from the perspective of being both Japanese and Catholic. His work is often compared with that of Graham Greene, who himself considered Endo one of the century's finest writers.

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