I have a friend once suffered from pneumonia. She read this book in the hospital when she had broken one of her ribs from a coughing fit. That is how pained and weak she was at that time. After she read the book she said she forgot her own anguish and cried for the suffering characters in this touching and tender book. I picked it up and have never been the same again. It made me angry, sad, and I wanted to do something about...
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This was the first book by Oe that I have read, and although it's probably not one of his better known books (he wrote it when he was just 23) I found it very powerful and insightful. The story itself reminded me a bit of William Golding's Lord of the Flies (which was actually written a year AFTER Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids was published). The major difference I found between the two books was the difference in where the...
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A sparse and chilling tale that recounts the worst week in the lives of 15 adolescent juvenile delinquents left abandoned in a plague infested village. This first novel of Kenzaburo Oe clearly shows his brilliance in capturing the essence of the human condition - warts and all, and why he would go on to win the Nobel prize in literature in 1994. The emotional themes of abandonment and isolation are expertly brought to life...
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Oe is a brilliant writer. This was the first book I have read by him, and I was taken away. Leaving no harsh image unspoken, Oe isn't bashful about writing details that may make the reader's stomache churn. To describe the book in a very breif synopsis, a group of reform school boys get abandoned amidst a plauge. The setting is post World War 2 Japan and the boys find a leader from the narrator, and form their own community...
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This is not an easy novel to read. From the first page to the last the reader's senses are assualted with descriptions of cruelty, violence and the various perversions of delinquent kids and savage adults. There are some moments of tenderness and consolation, but these are invariably ended by new catastrophes. A group of kids suffer the savage blows of their elders and are then abandoned in an isolated plague ridden village...
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