Death by Water

De: Kenzaburo Oe

Narrado por: Paul Boehmer

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

Reseñas de la Crítica

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

Finding truth and voice of oppression

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.

Finally The Novel...

that Oe resolves to write in all his other novels: the one on the mysterious death of his father. Great semi-autobiographical fiction.