How should the anti-hero, Bird, deal with the intrusion into his life of a brain-damaged child?
Welcome to the sordid underbelly of Japan. It’s all a long way from the hyper-ordered, law abiding, civil society that we imagine. Oe’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenzabur%C5%8D_%C5%8Ce) striking and vivid language matches perfectly the depravity into which Bird descends in his attempt to evade his personal reality. This is a harrowing but compulsive read from 1964.
165 pages in Grove Press paperback edition.
ISBN 978-0802150615
Kenzaburo Oe