Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! - (OE, Kenzaburo) by Kenzaburo Oe (Paperback)

About the Book

A remarkable portrait of the inexpressible bond between a famous writer and his cipher of a son, this magnificent novel of startling candor is from a Nobel Prize-winning Japanese master. As the man struggles to understand his family, he must evaluate himself as he deals with parenting a disabled child.

Book Synopsis

Wise and illuminating, Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! is a masterpiece from one of the world's finest writers, Kenzaburo Oe -- winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

K is a famous writer living in Tokyo with his wife and three children, one of whom is mentally disabled. K's wife confronts him with the information that this child, Eeyore, has been doing disturbing things -- behaving aggressively, asserting that he's dead, even brandishing a knife at his mother -- and K, given to retreating from reality into abstraction, looks for answers in his lifelong love of William Blake's poetry. As K struggles to understand his family and assess his responsibilities within it, he must also reevaluate himself -- his relationship with his own father, the political stances he has taken, the duty of artists and writers in society. A remarkable portrait of the inexpressible bond between this father and his damaged son, Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! is the work of an unparalleled writer at his sparkling best.

Review Quotes

"Elegant [and] mordantly entertaining." --The New Yorker

"Notable for [its] piercing emotional honesty. A hopeful book, celebrating the boy's unusual but complex humanity." --John Freeman, The Dallas Morning News

"Rouse Up is a series of linked, meditative stories that examine Nobel laureate Oe's changing relationship with his adolescent brain-damaged son." --The San Francisco Chronicle

"Traverses an immense emotional range. Oe's voice resounds in every sentence, making for rewarding if melancholy reading." --Andrew Ervin, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Whether this is a first experience with Oe or not, the reader will be left with many questions, and all good ones." --Amy Havel, Review of Contemporary Fiction

About the Author

Kenzaburo Oe was born in 1935 in the remote mountain village of Ose on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. Oe is considered one of the most dynamic and revolutionary writers to have emerged in Japan since World War II, and is acknowledged as the first truly modern Japanese writer. Oe is known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and his struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son. His dark musings on moral failure came to symbolize an alienated generation in postwar Japan. Oe's influences and literary heroes are less Japanese than American and European, ranging from Henry Miller to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Blake to Camus. His prolific body of work has won almost every major international honor, including the 1989 Prix Europalia and the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. His many translated works include A Personal Matter, Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, The Silent Cry, Hiroshima Notes, and Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids.