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eBook Wonderful Fool (Peter Owen Modern Classics) download

by Francis Mathy,Shusaku Endo

Francis Mathy Shusaku Endo History and Criticism English

eBook Wonderful Fool (Peter Owen Modern Classics) download

ISBN: 072061080X
Author: Francis Mathy,Shusaku Endo
Publisher: Peter Owen Ltd (September 1, 2000)
Language: English
Pages: 237
ePub: 1606 kb
Fb2: 1196 kb
Rating: 4.1
Other formats: lit txt mobi mbr
Category: Literature
Subcategory: History and Criticism

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Wonderful Fool (Peter Ow. .has been added to your Basket

Wonderful Fool (Peter Ow.has been added to your Basket. This satirical allegory, translated by Father Francis Murphy SJ, who also provides an Informative introduction, is beautifully presented with its representations of Hell, human suffering, the transformational power of forgiveness and, at the end, the ance of a white egret ‘flying across the rice fields, and slowly and gracefully climbing into the blue sky’ symbolizing Resurrection and Eternal.

See all Product description. Wonderful Fool (Peter Owen Modern Classics) Paperback.

Wonderful Fool (おバカさん, Obaka-san) is a novel by the Japanese author Shusaku Endō, originally serialized in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun in 1959. The main character, Gaston Bonaparte (a relative to the famous Napoleon Bonaparte) arrives at the Yokohama seaport to visit an old pen friend of his living in Tokyo.

A Peter Owen Modern Classics. Before I began reading Wonderful Fool, I was a little lukewarm on modern Japanese literature. Wonderful Fool' is a story about people living a mudswamp life, and the fear some of them have of freeing themselves from it. All told through a simpleton who somehow always manages to inflict damages on people's dark(est) sides-relentlessly attacking their A warmhearted tyrant 'Mudswamp 'is a term coined by Shusaku Endo. I have read the classics like The Tale of Genji, and other classical works, and also some modern-ish authors, as well as Endo's Silence.

Shusaku Endo – Wonderful Fool By James Nye on August 25, 2015 in Authors Shusaku Endo Rumour has it that principal photography for director Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s masterpiece Silence is now complete, and postproduction work continues. It seems likely that the fi. husaku Endo – Wonderful Fool By James Nye on August 25, 2015 in Authors Shusaku Endo Rumour has it that principal photography for director Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s masterpiece Silence is now complete, and postproduction work continues

Wonderful Fool by Shusaku Endo (Paperback, 2008).

Gaston Bonaparte, a young Frenchman, visits Tokyo to stay with his pen-pal Takamori. Wonderful Fool (Peter Owen Modern Classic). by 遠藤周作 and Shūsaku Endō.

Wonderful Fool Peter Owen Modern Classics. Fiction, Fiction - General, Japanese Novel And Short Story, Literary, Modern fiction, Short Stories (single author).

Shusaku Endo is widely regarded as one of the greatest Japanese authors of the late 20th century

Shusaku Endo is widely regarded as one of the greatest Japanese authors of the late 20th century. He has won many major literary awards and was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times.

Shusaku Endo (Endo, Shusaku). used books, rare books and new books. Wonderful Fool (Peter Owen Modern Classic): ISBN 9780720613209 (978-0-7206-132) Softcover, Peter Owen Publishers, 2008. Find all books by 'Shusaku Endo' and compare prices Find signed collectible books by 'Shusaku Endo'.

Wonderful Fool is the story of Gaston Bonoparte, a young Frenchman who visits Tokyo to stay with his pen-friend Takamori. Gaston is a trusting person with a simple love for others even after they have demonstrated deceit and betrayal, but his appearance and his behaviour prove a bitter disappointment and embarrassment to Takamori and his associates, as Gaston spends his time making friends with street children, stray dogs, prostitutes and gangsters. Endo charts his misadventures with irony, satire and humanity.

Comments: (7)

Vertokini

Wonderful Fool is a remarkable parable of a simple man who suddenly appears in the lives of a brother and sister who are residents of Tokyo . Gaston Bonaparte , a physically large simplistic and seemingly naive visitor , wanders the city befriending prostitutes, a stray dog, a fortune teller and ultimately a dangerous gangster. Regardless of how he gets treated he responds with an almost inhuman level of kindness and concern for all. Endo has written a parable of an almost Christlike figure who stands out not only for his physical difference but for his capacity to absorb mistreatment and pain without harboring resentment. This is a beautiful short novel that has many elements to recommend it not the least of which is the cross section of Tokyo society that is encountered as the story unfolds.

Fog

Super book. We all have a calling. Love conquers all.

Itiannta

Came in prestine condition. Bought it for a class but it's very entertaining and endearing. Characters are likable and I want to read to the end to find out why Gaston went to Japan for his "quest."

I'm a Russian Occupant

I read this book because it was assigned at our book club by the facilitator. I thought it was a little "odd", and the "wonderful fool" character was somewhat unbelievable. If he was that "unconscious" how did he navigate the world, and the trip from France to Japan?

Ceck

The protagonist in the story is a tall, horse-faced French missionary priest who comes to Japan for a reason that no one can understand until the end of the story.
Gaston Bonaparte is clumsy and inept. He is fearful and foolish. He is an embarrassment to his friends and a laughing stock to everyone else.
But Gaston has a tender, loving heart. He is unfailingly loyal and believes the best of everyone—against all evidence. In the end, those who held him in contempt are changed by his goodness. His invincible kindness makes him, in the words of one of the characters in the story, a "wonderful fool."
Endo, in the story, seems to be saying that someone with no charisma, no gifts, and no wisdom can shine with the love of Christ, and precisely because his remarkable love is combined with great limitations, can bring others to repentance and to God.
This story reminds me of Dostoevsky's "The Idiot," but I think this one is better.

Thomeena

Endo's novel is a marvelously winning and affecting story about the wanderings of a saintly Frenchman (and descendant of Napoleon) through the mean streets of post-war Tokyo.

You have maybe met someone like Gaston Bonaparte? The sort of man who apologizes when you step on his foot; who'd rather be cheated than think someone dishonest. Who is, naturally, held in a sort of weary pity by his family and in complete scorn by almost anyone else.

Endo addresses in this novel what it is that world values and what it does to a man who who is apart from those values. While the rest of the world cannily pursues it's own ends (survival, or better, and reproduction) Gaston is --quite unintentionally--pursuing that proffession which is revered in name but entirely held in contempt in actual practice. Gaston is maybe not a man who is good for much, certainly not in the world's eyes -but sainthood has ever been the most egalitarian of vocations.

There is a powerful case made for man's free will implicitly in this, but also in the novel's character, Endo, who is the opposite and the reflection of Gaston. He too though, is pursuing his end regardless of even himself -to the extent of refusing to take antibiotics for a tuberculosis infected lung.

Perhaps the novel's most poignant theme is it's message that even at our most debased and broken, God has not forgotten or given up on us. Endo's illustration of this is original and startling; Gaston chooses to follow after Endo at a cost and in a way that could only be called insane by anyone the world would call sane.

Endo's writing is simple and elegant and executed in an exciting, almost cinematic manner. It keeps the reader turning the pages through the book's all too short duration. If I had to say something critical about this book, I might mention that the writing is not as smooth as some of Endo's later works -it lacks subtlety at moments and there are plot possibilites which are raised and not pursued. That is just nothing though, to the whole of how wonderful this book really is.

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