For the first time in his long life, Nobel-laureate Kogito Choko is suffering from writer's block. The book that he wishes to write would examine the turbulent relationship he had with his father, and the guilt he feels about being absent the night his father drowned in a storm-swollen river; but how to write about a man he never really knew? When his estranged sister unexpectedly calls, she offers Choko a remedy - she has in her possession an old and mysterious red trunk, the contents of which promise to unlock the many secrets of the man who disappeared from their lives decades before.

Review
Praise for "Death by Water" One of the "San Francisco Chronicle"'s Best Books of the Year "[Oe s] an eloquent spokesman for a generation that can remember, vividly and viscerally, all sides of Japan s ambiguitiesa generation that s beginning to exit the stage. . . . The combination of this seriousness with a fearsome, graphic candortrained on himself most of allmakes him formidable, whether he s describing the challenges of being a parent or the sins of history. . . . A thoughtful reprise of a lifetime of literary endeavor. . . . You have to admire his serene and total conviction." Janice P. Nimura, "New York Times Book Review" "The densest and most rewarding 432 pages you ll experience this year . . . a wild ride of epic proportions . . . an absorbing, complex collage of multi-layered prose, poetic reference, memories and dreams . . . an essential revelation." Terry Hong, "Christian Science Monitor" "[Oe s] novels continue to bewilder and amaze . . . "Death by Water" masterfully captures the vertigo of [an] old writer s vivid inner world. That he accomplishes this while also looking outwardexploring the state of a nation and the passing of a generation, and what stands to be lost in the processis nothing short of remarkable." Gregory Leon Miller, "San Francisco Chronicle" "An epic . . . Oe grapples with the idea of duty to family, self, and country but is firmly critical of glamorizing the past." "Elle" "[A] deeply layered portrait of an elderly man blown backward into the future, his eyes planted squarely on the past." NPR "It s taken six years for this big novel by Japanese Nobel laureate Oe to reach Anglophone readers, but that wait has been for something immensely worthwhile . . . it is enchanting." "Booklist" (starred review) "[A] pensive novel, at once autobiographical and philosophical. . . . It's vintage Oe: provocative, doubtful without being cynical, elegant without being precious." "Kirkus Reviews" "Layered and reflexive . . . Told in echoing and overlapping accounts of conversations, telephone calls, and stage performances, Oe s deceptively tranquil idiom scans the violent history of postwar Japan and its present-day manifestations, in the end finding redemption." "Publishers Weekly""


About the Author
Considered one of Japan's leading post-war writers, Kenzaburo Oe has won almost every major international honour, including the 1989 Prix Europalia and the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in Tokyo.