Shūsaku Endō

In India, four Japanese tourists converge on the River Ganges in search of absolution. The novel probes their consciences, from Isobe, grieving the death of the wife he ignored in life, to Kugachi, haunted by wartime memories of a man who saved his life by eating human flesh, then drank himself to death to forget. An analysis of the importance of religion.

Two men - one a Japanese volcanologist, the other an unfrocked Catholic priest - both become obsessed with Akadake, a quiescent volcano either in its death throes or taking on renewed life.

A man who caused a girl to fall in love with him by playing up his deformity, then seduced and abandoned her, is haunted by her memory. A study of the workings of conscience. By a Japanese Catholic writer, author of Silence.

Two Catholic missionaries face the ultimate test of faith when they travel to Japan looking for their missing mentor, at a time when Catholicism was outlawed.--

The events described in this exciting and provocative three-act play, a companion piece to Endo's highly acclaimed novel Silence, take place in 1633, nearly a hundred years after Christianity was introduced into Japan. By this time, Japanese Christians were being cruelly persecuted by the government; every Christian searched out was made to apostatize or suffer a slow, agonizing death. The central character of The Golden Country is Father Christopher...