A Personal Matter

Kenzaburo Oe, John Nathan

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802150615
• eBook 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

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Translator’s Note
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13