Deep River

by Endo, Shusaku; Gessel, Van C.; Gessel, Van C.

• ISBN13: 9780811212892
• ISBN10: 0811212890
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-04-17
• Publisher: New Directions

Summary

Thirty years lie between the leading contemporary Japanese writer Shusaku Endo's justly famed Silence and his powerful new novel Deep River, a book which is both a summation and a pinnacle of his work. The river is the Ganges, where a group of Japanese tourists converge: Isobe, grieving the death of the wife he ignored in life; Kiguchi, haunted by wartime memories of the Highway of Death in Burma; Numanda, recovering from a critical illness; Mitsuko, a cynical woman struggling with inner emptiness; and butt of her cruel interest, Otsu, a failed seminarian for whom the figure on the cross is a god of many faces. Bringing these and other characters to vibrant life and evoking a teeming India so vividly that the reader is almost transported there, Endo reaches his ultimate religious vision, one that combines Christian faith with Buddhist acceptance.

Table of Contents

The Case of Isobe	7	(21)
The Informational Meeting	28	(6)
The Case of Mitsuko	34	(35)
The Case of Numada	69	(15)
The Case of Kiguchi	84	(20)
The City by the River	104	(23)
Goddesses	127	(21)
In Search of What Was Lost	148	(21)
The River	169	(13)
The Case of Otsu	182	(8)
Surely he Hath Borne Our Griefs	190	(4)
Rebirth	194	(11)
He Hath No Form Nor Comeliness	205