A Personal Matter

Kenzaburo Oe, John Nathan

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780802195449
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Japanese Literature
• Index: Literature

From the Nobel Prize–winning author: "One of the great short novels of the 20th century" ( The Wall Street Journal ). Internationally acclaimed as one of the world's most influential writers, Kenzabur? ?e brings to the fore the post-WWII rage and anxiety of a decorous society in this "deathly black comedy... dripping with nuclear terror" ( The Japan Times ). Bird is an antisocial twenty-seven-year-old intellectual hanging on to a failing marriage with whiskey. He dreams of going to Africa where the sky sprawls with possibilities. Then, as though walloped by a massive invisible fist, Bird's Utopian fantasies are shattered when his wife gives birth to what he calls their "monster baby." Now, Bird is left with one question: How can he and his wife spend the rest of their lives with this damaged thing clinging to their backs? As shameful, disgraceful, and unthinkable a desire as it is, Bird has an answer. Not sealed. Not just yet. Not before Bird flees on a bender of indiscriminate (and frustratingly impotent) sex, hard liquor, self-delusion, and most terrifying of all—self-discovery. "Very close to a perfect contemporary novel." — The New York Times "An astonishing novel." — Mother Jones