An Echo of Heaven - Hardcover

Oe, Kenzaburo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 4770019866 ISBN 13: 9784770019868

Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc, 1996

Synopsis

After suffering a series of personal tragedies including the loss of her two sons, Marie Kuraki leaves her home in Japan searching for a way to understand her life and finds herself venerated as a saint in a remote Mexican village

About this title

Review:

In An Echo of Heaven, Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe tells the riveting story of Marie Kuraki, a seductive, perverse intellectual whose two young sons, one retarded and one crippled, commit suicide. Thus begins Marie's intellectual, spiritual, and sexual journey to find meaning in this horrific tragedy. Oe, who draws a provocative but sympathetic portrait of Marie, supplements his narrative with old letters and journal entries from those whose lives she influenced.

Oe's prose (as translated by Margaret Mitsutani) is cold and precise, perhaps to maintain emotional distance since Oe himself has a mentally handicapped son. The description of Marie's quest also affords him the opportunity to engage in profound reflections on faith, sin, death, sexuality, heaven, and hell. --Madeline Crowley

About the Author:

Kenzaburo Oe was born in 1935 in a village in Shikoku, an island off the southwest coast of mainland Japan. After studying French literature at Tokyo University, he won his first literary award-the coveted Akutagawa Prize-for a short story, "The Catch." A writer committed to both literary and humanitarian causes, his output has included (in English) A Personal Matter, The Silent Cry, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, The Pinch Runner Memorandum, and Nip the Buds, Kill the Kids. These and other works of his have been widely translated, not only in Europe and Russia but in several Asian countries.

Oe, who won the Nobel Prize in 1994, lives in Tokyo with his wife and three children.

About this edition

• Publisher: Kodansha USA Inc
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 4770019866
• ISBN 13: 9784770019868
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 204