You might also like

More about A Personal Matter

• Book details
• Synopsis
• Trending among others

You get 33 loyalty points

Book synopsis

Oe's most important novel, A Personal Matter, has been called by The New York Times "close to a perfect novel." In A Personal Matter, Oe has chosen a difficult, complex though universal subject: how does one face and react to the birth of an abnormal child? Bird, the protagonist, is a young man of 27 with antisocial tendencies who more than once in his life, when confronted with a critical problem, has "cast himself adrift on a sea of whisky like a besotted Robinson Crusoe." But he has never faced a crisis as personal or grave as the prospect of life imprisonment in the cage of his newborn infant-monster. Should he keep it? Dare he kill it? Before he makes his final decision, Bird's entire past seems to rise up before him, revealing itself to be a nightmare of self-deceit. The relentless honesty with which Oe portrays his hero -- or antihero -- makes Bird one of the most unforgettable characters in recent fiction.

Book details

Book category Books in English Fiction & related items Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

• Full title: A Personal Matter
• Author: Kenzaburo Oe, John Nathan
• Language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 214
• EAN: 9780802150615
• ISBN: 0802150616
• ID: 11026580
• Publisher: Grove Pr
• Weight: 181 g
• Dimensions: 210 × 133 × 13 mm
• Date of publishing: 01. June 1982

Trending among others

---

---

---