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Sto caricando le informazioni... Kiku's Prayer: A Novel (Weatherhead Books on Asia) (edizione 2012)di Shūsaku Endō (Autore), Van Gessel (Traduttore)
Informazioni sull'operaKiku's Prayer: A Novel (Weatherhead Books on Asia) di Shūsaku Endō
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Mitsu and Kiku grew up in a Japanese village just down the road from a village with many Christians. It was during a time in which Christianity was banned, so their elders told them to stay away from the other village and its villagers. One day, Kiku has a chance to meet a boy (Seikichi) from the other village and falls in love with him. She and Mitsu are sent to work for a very demanding employer. Seikichi gives her a medallion of the virgin Mary and tells her to pray to her. Kiku is still not a Christian. She goes to work for the Christians, but still does not become one herself. The Christians are persecuted tremendously. What will become of Kiku and Seikichi? Will she ever realize her dream to marry him? This is not an easy book to read. The persecution suffered by the Japanese Christians in this period of the 1860s and early 1870s was horrific. Of course, the persecution of some of their forebears was as great or greater. One is reminded of the suffering that the Lord endured for all of mankind. Some of the words that Kiku spoke to the virgin Mary made you wish that Kiku had known more of the story of Jesus and the Gospels. She had no idea that Mary knew exactly how she felt as she had watched her own Son suffer. It's definitely more of a Catholic work than Protestant one, but it's one that all Christians should appreciate for the parallels between so many passages of Scripture. I do believe that persons other than Christians can appreciate Endo's work, but I do think the meaning will be richer for those who are more familiar with the New Testament. This review is based on an advance e-galley provided by the publisher through NetGalley. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Kiku's Prayer is told through the eyes of Kiku, a self-assured young woman from a rural Japanese village who falls in love with Seikichi, a devoted Catholic man. Practicing a faith still banned by the government, Seikichi is imprisoned but refuses to recant under torture. Kiku's efforts to reconcile her feelings for Seikichi's religion with the sacrifices she makes to free him mirror the painful, conflicting choices Japan faced as a result of exposure to modernity and the West. Seikichi's persecution exemplifies Japan's insecurities, and Kiku's tortured yet determined spirit represents the nation's resilient soul.Set in the turbulent years of the transition from the shogunate to the Meiji Restoration, Kiku's Prayer embodies themes central to Endo Shusaku's work, including religion, modernization, and the endurance of the human spirit. Yet this novel is much more than a historical allegory. It acutely renders one woman's troubled encounter with passion and spirituality at a transitional time in her life and in the history of her people. A renowned twentieth-century Japanese author, Endo wrote from the perspective of being both Japanese and Catholic. His work is often compared with that of Graham Greene, who himself considered Endo one of the century's finest writers. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)895.6Literature Literature of other languages Asian (east and south east) languages JapaneseClassificazione LCVotoMedia:
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Whilst this is happening Kiku, who is passionately in love with Seikichi, although she doesn’t understand his faith, is desperate to find him, this leads to her meeting a minor and corrupt official who, after forcing her to have sex with him, makes her give him money which he says he will give to Seikichi to make life easier for him. Kiku willing to do anything to help Seikichi has to sell her body to raise the necessary funds which the corrupt official pockets for himself.
Although there is hope in this book, the Christians due to pressure from the outside world do get released and sort of get their lives back, but Kiku never fulfils her dreams of a life with Seikichi, as what she goes through to help him eventually kills her. This is a really powerful book that questions not only ones faith, but what would you do for the love of someone, although I suppose at the end of the day it’s the same question, it’s just a matter of where your love is directed, for Seikichi this was God, although mainly in the form of Santa Maria. Only towards the end of his exile did he realise a love for Kiku, at this point to late - Kiku whose love was only for Seikichi was dead and to her, whilst she was alive, Santa Maria appeared as the rival, the point at which his love was fixed. It was only towards the end that she shared an understanding with this saint, as women who had both lost people they loved and through this awareness reached some kind of redemption.
http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/kikus-prayer-shusaku-endo.html ( )