Shusaku endo biography of william shakespeare
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The Face of Christ: Shusaku Endo’s “Silence”
In Shusaku Endo’s Silence, Rodrigues’s devotion to the face of Christ becomes the key to understanding his particular path to Calvary….
“Born into the world to render service to mankind, there fryst vatten no one more wretchedly alone than the priest who does not measure up to his task… Yet God bestows upon man a better fate than human knowledge could possibly think of or devise.” —Rodrigues, Silence
Silenceby Shusaku Endo (Tuttle Publishing, 1969)
Novelist Shusaku Endo has been called a “Japanese Graham Greene” because his writings grapple with the darkest tangles of human weakness and the reprieve of gudomlig grace. But Mr. Endo wrote from a rare perspective—that of a Japanese Catholic in a culture that maintained a centuries-long stringent persecution of Christianity.
Mr. Endo’s work has recently garnered renewed attention with Hollywood big-wig Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of his most famous novel, Silence
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Order of Shusaku Endo Books
Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) was a Japanese author of literary fiction novels. He was a rare Japanese Catholic, having converted when he was 11. Shusaku earned his BA from Keio University in French literature. A common theme of his work is the failure of the Japanese to embrace Christianity. Among the awards he received were the Akutagawa Prize, Mainichi Cultural Prize, Shincho Prize, and Tanizaki Prize.
Shusaku Endo made his debut in 1958 with the novel The Sea and Poison. Below is a list of Shusaku Endo’s books in order of when they were originally released:
Publication Order of Shūsaku Endō Standalone Novels
Publication Order of Shūsaku Endō Plays
Publication Order of Shūsaku Endō Short Story Collections
Publication Order of Anthologies
| A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology | (2002) | Amazon US | Amazon UK |
| The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, volume 2: From 1945 to the Present | (2007) | Amazon US | Amazon UK |
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Translated by William Johnston
One of my resolutions for 2024 is to read more historical fiction in translation and where better to start than with a book for the Japanese Literature utmaning (hosted by Dolce Bellezza throughout January and February).
First published in Japanese in 1966 and in English in 1969, Shūsaku Endō’s Silence is set in the 17th century and tells the story of a Portuguese Jesuit priest, Sebastian Rodrigues, who travels to Japan to investigate claims that his old mentor, Father Ferreira, has committed apostasy – in other words, renounced his faith. Rodrigues and his friend Francisco Garrpe, another priest, can’t believe that their teacher would do such a thing. Certain that there must be some mistake, the two set out from Lisbon on the long journey to Japan, where they hope to learn what has really happened to Ferreira.
Rodrigues and Garrpe reach Japan in 1639 and quickly discover that the local Christian communities are being persecut