| A Personal Matter Contributor(s): Oe, Kenzaburo (Author), Nathan, John (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0802150616 ISBN-13: 9780802150615 Publisher: Grove Press OUR PRICE: $16.20 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 1994 Annotation: Oe's most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times "close to a perfect novel." In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child? Bird, the protagonist, is a young man of 27 with antisocial tendencies who more than once in his life, when confronted with a critical problem, has "cast himself adrift on a sea of whisky like a besotted Robinson Crusoe." But he has never faced a crisis as personal or grave as the prospect of life imprisonment in the cage of his newborn infant-monster. Should he keep it? Dare he kill it? Before he makes his final decision, Bird's entire past seems to rise up before him, revealing itself to be a nightmare of self-deceit. The relentless honesty with which Oe portrays his hero -- or antihero -- makes Bird one of the most unforgettable characters in recent fiction. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Family Life - General - Literary Criticism | Asian - General |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 68022007 |
| Lexile Measure: 980 |
| Series: OE, Kenzaburo |
| Physical Information: 0.46" H x 5.38" W x 8.12" (0.44 lbs) 214 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Asian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Kenzaburo Oe, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, is internationally acclaimed as one of the most important and influential post-World War II writers, known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and his own struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son. The Swedish Academy lauded Oe for his poetic force [that] creates an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today. His most popular book, A Personal Matter is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose Utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child. "In writing novels there is no substitute for maturity and moral awareness. Kenzaburo Oe has both."--Alan Levensohn, Christian Science Monitor |