* Kenzaburo Oe - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1994 (16 books)

KENZABURŌ ŌE (1935 – 2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature whose works express the disillusionment and rebellion of his post-World War II generation.  His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism.  Ōe was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."

Ōe's first novel, NIP THE BUDS, SHOOT THE KIDS (1958), received widespread praise for its depiction of the tragedy of war tearing asunder the idyllic life of a rural youth.  Following the traumatic birth of his first son with a cranial deformity, Ōe wrote A PERSONAL MATTER (1964), a darkly humorous account of a new father's struggle to accept the brain-damaged child into his life, and of how he arrived at his resolve to live with him.  Through the catalytic medium of humanism, he conjoined his personal trauma with a broader social perspective in HIROSHIMA NOTES (1965), a long essay describing the realities and thoughts of the A-bomb victims.  In the early 1970s Ōe’s writing, particularly his essays, reflected a growing concern for power politics in the nuclear age and with questions involving the developing world.

Ōe continued to investigate the problems of characters who feel alienated from establishment conformity and the materialism of postwar Japan’s consumer-oriented society.  Among his later works were the novel THE SILENT CRY (1967), a work that ties in the myths and history of the forest village with the contemporary age; a collection of short fiction entitled TEACH US TO OUTGROW OUR MADNESS (1969) which painfully portrays both the agony-laden trials and errors he experienced in his life with his unspeaking infant child, and his pursuit of his own father who he lost during the war; and the novel THE PINCH RUNNER MEMORANDUM (1976), which offers a contemporary and explosive picture of the nuclear family, which pivots on the bizarre odyssey of a Japanese father and son.

The novel RISE UP, O YOUNG MEN OF THE NEW AGE! (1983) is distinguished by a highly sophisticated literary technique and by the author’s frankness in personal confession.  Ōe draws upon images from William Blake's Prophecies and depicts his son's development from a child to a young man.  AN ECHO OF HEAVEN (1989) uses the religious ideology of the American writer Flannery O’Connor as a means to explore the suffering and possible salvation of a woman beset by a number of personal tragedies.  THE CHANGELING (2000), the first volume of a projected trilogy, tells the story of a writer who relives his personal history, often in a dreamlike and surreal manner, after he receives a collection of audiotapes from an estranged friend who appears to have recorded his own suicide.

JAPAN, THE AMBIGUOUS, AND MYSELF (1995) reproduces Ōe's Nobel Prize acceptance speech as well as a selection of his most penetrating essays on themes varying from Hiroshima to the state of modern fiction.

Kenzaburō Ōe died on March 3, 2023, at the age of 88.


The following books are in PDF and/or ePub format as indicated:

== FICTION ==
 
* A Personal Matter [tr. Nathan] (Grove, 1969/1994) – ePub + PDF^
* A Quiet Life [tr. Yanagishita & Wetherall] (Grove, 1996) – ePub
* An Echo of Heaven [tr. Mitsutani] (Kodansha, 1996) – PDF
* The Changeling [tr. Boehm] (Grove, 2010) – ePub
* Death by Water [tr. Boehm] (Grove, 2015) – ePub
* Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (Marion Boyers, 1995) – ePub + PDF
* Pinch Runner Memorandum [tr. Wilson] (Routledge, 2015) – ePub + PDF
* Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age (Grove, 2002) – ePub + PDF
* Seventeen & J [tr. van Haute] (Foxrock, 2016) – ePub
* The Silent Cry [tr. Bester] (Serpent's Tail, 2011) – ePub
* Somersault [tr. Gabriel] (Grove, 2003) – ePub
* Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness [tr. Nathan] (Grove, 1977) – ePub

== NONFICTION ==

* A Healing Family [tr. Snyder] (Kodansha, 1996) – PDF
* Hiroshima Notes (Grove, 1996) – PDF
* Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself (Kodansha, 1995) – PDF
* On Politics and Literature: Two Lectures (Townsend Center, 1999) – PDF

PDF^ = courtesy of @pharmakate


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