Synopses & Reviews
Review
Napier is a reader of considerable acuity and sympathy, with a refreshing candor about her convictions. -- David Biale, author of
Review
[Napier] has provided us with a valuable guide to the key works and intellectual concerns of these two pillars of postwar Japanese discourse. Moreover, she has offered penetrating interpretations of numerous works that remain inaccessible to many readers, whether due to lack of existing translations or the difficulty of the texts themselves...Susan Napier has undertaken a daunting project in examining so much of the work of not just one, but two of Japan's most formidable writers and personalities. In so doing, she has provided all those who read and write about Japanese literature with a rich resource for provocative exchange. -- Journal of Japanese Studies
Synopsis
Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburo and the ever-disturbing Mishima Yukio have explored twentieth-century Japanese alienation with an unsparing eye and savage humor. In Escape from the Wasteland, Susan J. Napier examines their vivid and often perverse depictions of sex, impotence, emperor worship, and violence. For new readers of Oe and Mishima, this is an indispensable guide. For critics and scholars, it is the benchmark study.
Synopsis
Lurid depictions of sex and impotence, themes of emperor worship and violence, the use of realism and myth--these characterize the fiction of Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo. Napier discovers surprising similarities as well as provocative dissimilarities in the work of two writers of radically different political orientations.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-244) and index.
About the Author
Susan J. Napier is Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.