About this item
Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe comes from a tiny Japanese hamlet where storytelling was a prominent tradition; he also learned the national mythology of Japan when he went to school. At university, he studied French literature and was impressed by the grotesque imagery of Rabelais. Later, his son's mental disability profoundly affected Oe's thinking. All these influences combine with Oe's interest in democracy, humanism, and multiculturalism in the stories and imagery of his fiction. His writing often focuses on the effects of war and modernization on young people.
About the Author
Kenzabur? ?e (?? ??? ?e Kenzabur?? , born 31 January 1935) is a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His novels, short stories and essays, 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. ?e was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".
