Deep River. Translated from the Japanese by Van C. Gessel.

Endo, Shusaku.

ISBN 10: 0720609208 / ISBN 13: 9780720609202

Published by London / Chester Springs, Peter Owen Publishers., 1994

About this Item

16 x 24cm. 216 pages. Original hardcover with dustjacket in protective Mylar. Illustrated endpapers. Excellent condition. Includes inserted newspaper reviews of this book and of other works by the author. Shusaku Endo was a Japanese author who wrote from the rare perspective of a Japanese Roman Catholic. In this, his last novel, a trip to India becomes a journey of discovery for a group of Japanese tourists playing out their "individual dramas of the soul." Isobe searches for his reincarnated wife, while Kiguchi relives the wartime horror that ultimately saved his life. Alienated by middle age, Mitsuko follows Otsu, a failed priest, to the holy city of Varanas, hoping that the murky Ganges holds the secret to the "difference between being alive and truly living." Looking for absolutes, each character confronts instead the moral ambiguity of India's complex culture, in which good and evil are seen as a whole as indifferent to distinction as the Ganges River, which washes the living and transports the dead. This novel is a fascinating study of cultural truths revealed through a rich and varied cast. [From The Library Journals] Sprache: english.

Seller Inventory # 91147AB

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Deep River. Translated from the Japanese by Van C. Gessel.
• Publisher: London / Chester Springs, Peter Owen Publishers.
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0720609208
• ISBN 13: 9780720609202
• Binding: Hardcover
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Weight: 1200000 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Varia

About this title

Synopsis

The acclaimed author of Silence offers a religious vision combining Christian faith with Buddhist acceptance in the story of a group of Japanese tourists who converge at the Ganges River, in an India vividly brought to life.

From the Back Cover

Thirty years lie between the leading contemporary Japanese writer Shusaku Endo's justly famed Silence and his powerful new novel Deep River, a book which is both a summation and a pinnacle of his work. 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 wartime memories of the Highway of Death in Burma; Numanda, recovering from a critical illness; Mitsuko, a cynical woman struggling with inner emptiness; and butt of her cruel interest, Otsu, a failed seminarian for whom the figure on the cross is a god of many faces. Bringing these and other characters to vibrant life and evoking a teeming India so vividly that the reader is almost transported there, Endo reaches his ultimate religious vision, one that combines Christian faith with Buddhist acceptance.