A Quiet Life
Published by Grove Atlantic
This classic work of world literature by the 1994 Japanese Nobel laureate is a devastating and moving blend of memoir and fiction.
An uncanny blend of the real with the imagined, of memoir with fiction, A Quiet Life is narrated by Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old woman. Her father is a famous and fascinating novelist; her older brother, though severely brain-damaged, possesses an almost magical gift for musical composition; and her mother’s life is devoted to the care of them both.
Ma-chan and her younger brother find themselves emotionally on the outside of this oddly constructed nuclear family. But when her father accepts a visiting professorship from an American university, Ma-chan finds herself suddenly the head of the household and at the center of family relationships that “are movingly illuminated” (The New York Times) through Oe’s unique and unpredictable genius.
An uncanny blend of the real with the imagined, of memoir with fiction, A Quiet Life is narrated by Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old woman. Her father is a famous and fascinating novelist; her older brother, though severely brain-damaged, possesses an almost magical gift for musical composition; and her mother’s life is devoted to the care of them both.
Ma-chan and her younger brother find themselves emotionally on the outside of this oddly constructed nuclear family. But when her father accepts a visiting professorship from an American university, Ma-chan finds herself suddenly the head of the household and at the center of family relationships that “are movingly illuminated” (The New York Times) through Oe’s unique and unpredictable genius.
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