Kiku's prayer : a novel / Endo Shusaku ; translated by Van C. Gessel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Endō, Shūsaku, 1923-1996.

Series:

Weatherhead Books on Asia

Weatherhead books on Asia

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Young women--Fiction.

Young women.

Christianity--Fiction.

Christianity.

Persecution--Japan--History--19th century--Fiction.

Persecution.

Nagasaki-shi (Japan)--Fiction.

Nagasaki-shi (Japan).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (329 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York ; Chichester : Columbia University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Kiku's Prayer is told through the eyes of Kiku, a self-assured young woman from a rural Japanese village who falls in love with Seikichi, a devoted Catholic man. Practicing a faith still banned by the government, Seikichi is imprisoned but refuses to recant under torture. Kiku's efforts to reconcile her feelings for Seikichi's religion with the sacrifices she makes to free him mirror the painful, conflicting choices Japan faced as a result of exposure to modernity and the West. Seikichi's persecution exemplifies Japan's insecurities, and Kiku's tortured yet determined spirit represents the nation's resilient soul.Set in the turbulent years of the transition from the shogunate to the Meiji Restoration, Kiku's Prayer embodies themes central to Endo Shusaku's work, including religion, modernization, and the endurance of the human spirit. Yet this novel is much more than a historical allegory. It acutely renders one woman's troubled encounter with passion and spirituality at a transitional time in her life and in the history of her people. A renowned twentieth-century Japanese author, Endo wrote from the perspective of being both Japanese and Catholic. His work is often compared with that of Graham Greene, who himself considered Endo one of the century's finest writers.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Mitsu and Kiku

The searcher

Nagasaki

The Road is long

The Temple of the Southern Barbarians

A Day of Hope

Spies

Battles in the Dark

The contest

Heavy rain

A chance encounter

The setting of the sun

The reunion

Separation

The crowd

Tsuwano

Maruyama

The valley of pain

Two kinds of love

A man named ITŌ

The blessed and the unblessed

Otome pass

The third winter

Snow and the blessed mother

Going home

Epilogue

Between the Lines: Author's Afterword

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780231530835

0231530838

OCLC:

824451423