Bøger af Shusaku Endo

White Man, Yellow Man, by one of Japan's most celebrated writers, gathers into one volume two novellas set during World War II--one in France, one in Japan. "White Man," which won Japan's most prestigious Akutagawa literary prize, is the work that first brought Endo wide recognition. The main character is a French collaborator who assists the Nazi occupiers of Lyon with their interrogation and torture of a Catholic seminarian, a man he knows and whose cousin he had ruined before the war. The narrative unfolds in the voice of the collaborator in his diary, which unflinchingly documents the cruelty and sadism of human beings while still pondering the Christian desire for redemption. "Yellow Man" is the story of a Japanese man who, though raised as a Christian, maintains a distressing wartime liaison with his best friend's fiancée. Exhausted by the war and slowly dying from tuberculosis, he discovers that his commitment to an alien "white" God has never been more than superficial. Endo's novellas intertwine most clearly in this character and the persecuted French missionary whose relationship to God is deeply sincere--contrasting the experience of a man who discovers his indifference God to that of one who discovers that he has no choice--he must either be faithful or die. Together, these novellas do more than paint a portrait of life on two continents in the waning days of the war. They also address the fundamental question: What is the meaning of Christianity for East and West alike? +

In this moving novel, a group of Japanese tourists, each of whom iswrestling with his or her own demons, travels to the River Ganges on apilgrimage of grace.

In novels such as Silence, Endo Shusaku 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.

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.

In 1613, four low-ranking Japanese samurai, accompanied by a Spanish priest,set sail for Mexico to bargain for trading rights with the West in exchange fora Catholic crusade through Japan. Their arduous journey lasts four years, asthey travel onward to Mexico then Rome, where they are persuaded that thesuccess of their mission depends on their conversion to Christianity. In fact,the enterprise seems to have been futile from the start: the mission returns toJapan to find that the political tides have shifted. The authorities are now pursuing an isolationist policy and a ruthless stamping out of Western influences.In the face of disillusionment and death, the samurai can only find solace in asavior they're not sure they believe in.

A simple and powerful retelling of the life of Christ as seen through the eyes of a Japanese novelist.

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.

The Sea and Poison was the first Japanese book to confront the problem of individual responsibility in wartime, painting a searing picture of the human race's capacity for inhumanity. At the outset of this powerful story we find a Doctor Suguro in a backwater of modern-day Tokyo practicing expert medicine in a dingy office. He is haunted by his past experience and it is that past which the novel unfolds. During the war Dr. Suguro serves his internship in a hospital where the senior staff is more interested in personal career-building than in healing. He is induced to assist in a horrifying vivisection of a POW. "What is it that gets you," one of his colleagues asks. "Killing that prisoner? The conscience of man, is that it?"

The river is the Ganges, where a group of Japanese tourists converge: Isobe, grieving the death of the wife he ignored in life; Kiguchi, haunted by war-time memories of the Highway of Death in Burma; Numada, recovering from a critical illness; Mitsuko, a cynical woman struggling with inner emptiness; and, the butt of her cruel interest, Otsu, a failed seminarian for whom the figure on the cross is a god of many faces. In this novel, the renowned Japanese writer Shusaku Endo reaches his ultimate religious vision.