Death by Water Audiobook By Kenzaburo Oe cover art

Death by Water

 Preview
LIMITED TIME OFFER

3 months free
Try for $0.00
Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.

Death by Water

By: Kenzaburo Oe
Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
Try for $0.00

$0.00/mo. after 3 months. Offer ends July 31, 2025 at 11:59PM PT. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.05

Buy for $18.05

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

Kenzaburo Oe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today". In Death by Water, his recurring protagonist and literary alter ego returns to his hometown village in search of a red suitcase fabled to hold documents revealing the details of his father's death during World War II: details that will serve as the foundation for his new and final novel.

Since his youth, renowned novelist Kogito Choko planned to fictionalize his father's fatal drowning in order to fully process the loss. Stricken with guilt and regret over his failure to rescue his father, Choko has long been driven to discover why his father was boating on the river in a torrential storm. Though he remembers overhearing his father and a group of soldiers discussing an insurgent scheme to stage a suicide attack on Emperor Mikado, Choko cannot separate his memories from imagination, and his family is hesitant to reveal the entire story.

©2009 Kenzaburo Oe. Translation copyright 2015 by Deborah Boliver Boehm (P)2015 Tantor Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic reviews

"This novel...proceeds almost exclusively via conversation made up of intricate, literarily and dramaturgically knowledgeable, politically progressive, long speeches. And it is enchanting." ( Booklist)

People who viewed this also viewed...

The Fyodor Dostoyevsky Complete Collection Audiobook By Fyodor Dostoyevsky cover art
The Fyodor Dostoyevsky Complete Collection By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
All stars
Most relevant  
This story at first seems pretty straightforward, a writer having issues with writers block. The story then unfolds and becoming an eye opening experience for the characters and you the reader. Throughout the novel the story tries to relate the works of our main character in stage plays conveying messages deeper hidden in the protagonists life. The reader is taken back to understand the reality of the characters past and experiences. The story ends off on a more serious topic of Rape and supperisson of women, a more serious topic to close out the novel but fitted well with the plot it wasn't so out of left field.

Finding truth and voice of oppression

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
that Oe resolves to write in all his other novels: the one on the mysterious death of his father. Great semi-autobiographical fiction.

Finally The Novel...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.