A Quiet Life by Kenzaburo Oe

A Quiet Life by Kenzaburo Oe

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.

Kenzaburo Oe was born in 1935 in the remote mountain village of Ose on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. Oe is considered one of the most dynamic and revolutionary writers to have emerged in Japan since World War II, and is acknowledged as the first truly modern Japanese writer. Oe is known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and his struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son. His dark musings on moral failure came to symbolize an alienated generation in postwar Japan. Oe's influences and literary heroes are less Japanese than American and European, ranging from Henry Miller to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Blake to Camus.

In 1960, Oe traveled to China where he met Mao Zedong, and the following year he traveled Paris where he met one of his influences, Jean-Paul Sartre. His prolific body of work has won almost every major international honor, including the 1989 Prix Europalia and the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. His many translated works include A Personal Matter (1964), Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness (1969), The Silent Cry (1967), Hiroshima Notes (1965), and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (1958).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780330353113
ISBN 10	033035311X
Title	A Quiet Life
Author	Kenzaburo Oe
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Picador
Year published	1998-01-09
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable