Personal Matter
by Kenzaburō Ōe · first published 1970
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Kenzaburō Ōe, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, is internationally acclaimed as one of the most important and influential post-World War 2 Writers, known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and his own struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son. The Swedish Academy lauded Ōe for his "poetic force (that} creates an imagined world where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today." His most personal book, A Personal Matter is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage who
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…underworld customer, and I'll leave it at that :) If you like Murakami and want to dip a toe into "deeper" (or at least more prestigious and less popular) Japanese fiction, Kenzaburo Oe (Changeling, A Personal Matter) is a good starting point. If you want to go darker, a little more unhinged, and on the opposite end of the political spectrum, Yukio Mishima (Confessions of a Mask) is also good. If you want to go even…
on “Japanese Writing After Murakami” ↗A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe. It's short, it's gripping, it's devastating. Oe won a nobel prize for it, so you can't go wrong there.
on “Ask HN: I only read tech/business books – recommend me some fiction?” ↗"A Personal Matter" by Kenzaburo Oe is really incredible.
on “Japanese Writing After Murakami” ↗