Deep River (First Edition)

Shusaku Endo (author); Van C. Gessel (translator)

ISBN 10: 0811212890 / ISBN 13: 9780811212892

Published by New Directions, New York, 1995

About this Item

New Directions, New York, 1995. Cloth. First printing. A fine book in a fine dust jacket. A tight clean copy. Jacket unclipped with original publisher's price of $19.95 intact. Comes with archival-quality dust jacket protector. Shipped in well padded box. Translated from the Japanese by Van C. Gessel. When Endo died in 1996, the novel was one of two chosen to be placed inside his coffin. The novel traces the journey of four Japanese tourists on a tour of India in 1984. Source for the 1995 film directed by Kei Kumai, starring Toshiro Mifune,

Seller Inventory # Fiction-Stacks-E-001

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Deep River (First Edition)
• Publisher: New Directions, New York
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811212890
• ISBN 13: 9780811212892
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Japanese Literature

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Authors

Shusaku Endo (1923–1996) is widely regarded as one of the most important Japanese authors of the late twentieth century. He won many major literary awards and was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. His novel Silence was recently made into a major film directed by Martin Scorsese.

Van C. Gessel is a professor of Japanese at Brigham Young University, and has a Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Columbia University. After joining the Church of Latter-day Saints in 1968, Gessel served as a missionary to Japan from 1970-71. He was given a lifetime achievement award from the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture of Columbia University for his translations of modern Japanese fiction.