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Kenzaburo Oe is internationally recognized as one of the world's finest writers, and has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Now, in the first new novel he has published since winning the Nobel Prize, he makes an immense departure from the autobiographical fiction he is most known for, in a magnificent story of the charisma of leaders, the danger of zealotry, and the mystery of faith. A decade before the story opens, two men referred to as the Patron and Guide of mankind were leaders of an influential religious movement. When a radical faction of their followers threatened to unleash an apocalypse, they recanted all of their teachings and abandoned their followers. After ten years of silence, Patron and Guide begin contacting their old followers and reaching out to the public. But the radical faction continues to cause problems, kidnapping Guide and holding him captive until his health gives out. As Patron and a core of the faithful attempt to incorporate followers from the movement's past into a new vision for its future, the conflicting agendas of these factions threaten to make a mockery of the church's unity -- or something far more dangerous. Ambitious and beautifully told, Somersault illuminates the spiritual searching of modern man that makes religious cults so compelling. It is an astonishing achievement that again confirms Kenzaburo Oe's place among the world's finest writers, even as it takes his body of work in fresh and fertile new directions. "Oe reads and writes ... with a grace that comes not through religion but through imagination and understanding." -- Heller McAlpin, San Francisco Chronicle

"[I]ntriguing....The final pages...vibrate with dramatic energy....Oe is a deeply flawed great writer...."

Kirkus, 02/01/2003

"SOMERSAULT, a huge and complex tone, is concerned with devotion and zealotry."

Susanna Jones, Literary Review, July 2003

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