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Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age
Hardback
Main Details
| Title |
Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age
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| Authors and Contributors |
By (author) Kenzaburo Oe
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| Physical Properties |
| Format:Hardback | | Pages:259 | | Dimensions(mm): Height 223,Width 147 |
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| Category/Genre | Modern and contemporary fiction (post c 1945) |
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| ISBN/Barcode |
9781843540779
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| Classifications | Dewey:895.635 |
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| Audience | |
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Publishing Details |
| Publisher |
Atlantic Books
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| Imprint |
Atlantic Books
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| Publication Date |
8 July 2002 |
| Publication Country |
United Kingdom
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Description
This is a virtuoso novel of extraordinary power that returns to the themes that haunt so much of Oe's work: family, responsibility, writing and the experience of being a parent to a disabled child.K is a famous writer living in Tokyo with his wife and three children, one of whom has been, since birth, mentally disabled. A highly cerebral man who often retreats from everyday life into his own world of abstraction - usually the poetry of William Blake - K is confronted by his wife with the reality that his child, Eeyore, has been doing disturbing things: behaving aggressively, asserting he's dead, even brandishing a knife at his mother. K's struggle to understand his family and his place within it, leads him to a startling re-evaluation of himself, his attitudes and his responsibilities. Bittersweet, inspiring and sometimes hilarious, Rouse Up is the work of an unparalleled writer at his dazzling best.
Author Biography
KENZABURO OE has won the Prix Europalia and the Nobel Prize for Literature, among many other awards. His translated works include Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, A Quiet Life, Hiroshima Notes and A Personal Matter. He lives in Tokyo with his wife and three children
ReviewsKirkus Review US:First published in Japan in 1983, it's taken nearly 20 years to bring a translation of this book by Nobel prize-winner Oe to the UK. It's a work that defies categorisation: part fiction, part memoir, part critical study of William Blake, it's a series of musings about life, death and art, bound together by a loose narrative thread. The central character of the book is Eeyore, the narrator's teenaged son. Eeyore is mentally handicapped, but is able to offer up surprising insights that give his father pause for reflection. In real life, Oe has a mentally handicapped son the same age as Eeyore; the narrator, a novelist, is to all intents and purposes Oe himself. Yet Oe has imaginatively re-interpreted enough of his own life to allow this to be billed as a work of fiction. The book begins with a new cause of worry for the author and his wife; Eeyore, now in his late teens, has started to display violent behaviour. The author's challenge is to understand his son more fully and to help make him better adjusted to the world. But instead, it is the author who undergoes a learning process, and his son who is the teacher. At the same time, the author is increasingly drawn to the poetry and paintings of William Blake, whose meditations on innocence and experience seem to shed light on the inner life of Eeyore, who has feeling (and an exceptional musical talent) but lacks the ability to reason. Blake's philosophy also helps the author reach an understanding of certain events in his own childhood and the death of friends in adulthood. This book is quite unlike anything you will ever read: sometimes difficult, often challenging, it is nonetheless an inspiring meditation on the ways in which the apparent burden of raising a severely handicapped child can transform life in unexpected ways. And Oe is ably assisted in his telling of Eeyore's story by John Nathan's excellent translation. (Kirkus UK)
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