Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age!

kenzaburō Ōe

"K is a famous writer living in Tokyo with his wife and three children, the oldest of whom was born with a brain anomaly that has left him mentally disabled. A highly cerebral man who often retreats from real life into abstraction - in this case, the poetry of William Blake - K is confronted by his wife with the reality that this child, Eeyore, has been saying and doing disturbing things - behaving aggressively, asserting that he's dead, even brandishing a knife at his mother. As the days pass, various events - K's hapless attempts to communicate with his son, Eeyore's near drowning during a father-son trip to the swimming pool, a terrible hurricane that nearly destroys the family's mountain cottage and the family inside it - K is forced to question his fitness as a father." K reconsiders his own life - his relationship with his father, his rural upbringing, his relationship with a well-known dissident writer who committed suicide, the responsibilities of artists and writers in Japan generally. In the end, in part through his obsessive rereading of Blake, K is able to see that things are not always what they seem, especially where his son is concerned, and to trust his heart as well as his mind.

Genres fictionjapanjapanese literaturenobel prizeasialiteraturenovelsasian literatureromancecultural

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1983

This edition

Format: 272 pages, Paperback
Published: July 10, 2003 by Atlantic Books
ISBN: 9781843540786
ASIN: 1843540789
Language: English

About the author

kenzaburō Ōe

Kenzaburō Ōe (大江健三郎), is a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engage with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.

Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."