Kenzaburo Oe - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1994 (13 books)

KENZABURO OE (b. 1935) is a Japanese author and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. He received the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature for "creat[ing] an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." His works, 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.

Oe's first novel, NIP THE BUDS, SHOOT THE KIDS (1958), depicting the tragedy of war tearing asunder the idyllic life of a rural youth, received widespread praise. Following the traumatic birth of his first son with a cranial deformity, Oe 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 Oe’s writing, particularly his essays, reflected a growing concern for power politics in the nuclear age and with questions involving the developing world.

Oe 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. Oe 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 Oe'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.


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

Fiction

* THE CHANGELING (Grove, 2010). Translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm. -- ePUB

* AN ECHO OF HEAVEN (Kodansha, 1996). Translated by Margaret Mitsutani. -- PDF

* NIP THE BUDS, SHOOT THE KIDS (Grove, 1996). Translated by Paul St. John Mackintosh and Maki Sugiyama. -- PDF

* A PERSONAL MATTER (Grove, 1969/1994). Translated by John Nathan. -- ePUB + PDF (scanned by and reproduced with the kind permission of @pharmakate)

* THE PINCH RUNNER MEMORANDUM (M.E. Sharpe, 1993). Translated by Michiko N. Wilson and Michael K. Wilson. -- PDF

* A QUIET LIFE (Grove, 1996). Translated by Kunioki Yanagishita and William Wetherall. -- ePUB

* ROUSE UP, O YOUNG MEN OF THE NEW AGE! (Grove, 2002). Translated by John Nathan. -- ePUB + PDF

* THE SILENT CRY (Serpents Tail, 2011). Translated by John Bester. -- ePUB

* SOMERSAULT (Grove, 2003). Translated by Philip Gabriel. -- ePUB

* TEACH US TO OUTGROW OUR MADNESS: Four Short Novels (Grove, 1977). Translated by John Nathan. -- ePUB


Nonfiction

* HIROSHIMA NOTES (Marion Boyars, 1995). Translated by David L. Swain and Toshi Yanezawa. -- PDF

* JAPAN, THE AMBIGUOUS, AND MYSELF: The Nobel Prize Speech & Other Lectures (Kodansha, 1995). -- PDF

* ON LITERATURE AND POLITICS: Two Lectures (Occasional Papers of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, no. 18 / 1999). -- PDF