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A personal Matter

A must proudly admmit a deep fascination with Japanese literature, although I have not read so many Japanese authors but a relevant bunch of them in which I ought to mention Yukio Mishima, Kobe Katsukawa and Ryunosuke Akutagawa -I came accross the latest after reading a book by Gonzalo Arango-.

This time I want to drop some lines about Kenzaburo Oe's "A personal matter". Oe won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 and is regarded as one of the most important and influential post-Wold War II writers.

"A personal matter is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child".


I have to say that while reading the book, characters such Himiko and Bird himself remainded me some of the characters in Dostoyevsky's literature in the way in which Oe develops their personality and understands the wide variety of human condition.

"Without doubt Oe's awsome learning, frightening memory, complex ideas, unbridled imagination, resilient political will, and indiscriminate modesty tempered by absolute self-assurance make him the most formidable figure in the literary world of Japan now"
Masao Miyoshi.

Volan

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