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Overview
Overview
Shusaku Endo's New York Times bestselling classic novel of enduring faith in dangerous times, soon to be a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, and Adam Driver
"Silence I regard as a masterpiece, a lucid and elegant drama."-The New York Review of Books
Seventeenth-century Japan: Two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to a country hostile to their religion, where feudal lords force the faithful to publicly renounce their beliefs. Eventually captured and forced to watch their Japanese Christian brothers lay down their lives for their faith, the priests bear witness to unimaginable cruelties that test their own beliefs. Shusaku Endo is one of the most celebrated and well-known Japanese fiction writers of the twentieth century, and Silence is widely considered to be his great masterpiece.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Endo, Shusaku
- ISBN: 9781250082275
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.20 x 0.70
- Number Of Pages: 256
- Publication Year: 2017
Customer Reviews
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5 ★
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Portuguese priests face prosecution in Japan
Alain G. - 1 year 7 months agoSilence is a novel about two Portuguese priests/missionaries who seek out their Church's head priest in Japan after hearing that he has renounced his religious beliefs due to persecution from the Japanese empire. Set in late 1500's Japan, it's an incredible story about facing persecution and committing to your beliefs even through the harshest of times. Endo uses rich imagery and pretty harsh details of the tortures the main characters and their Japanese Converts endured. P.S. This is Martin Scorsese's next film, Starring Liam Neeson, coming out in December/January!
HPB Staff Review -
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. - Tertullian
Ryan B. - 4 years agoSilence, by Shusaku Endo, tells the story of two Jesuit missionaries who come to feudal Japan to find their mentor who has been rumored to have renounced his faith. Endo does a wonderful job of weaving the diary of the main character (the fictional Fr. Rodriguez) into the wonderfully written prose of the novel. In the book, the meaning of faith is questioned in only the way a novel can. We are wrought right through the wringer along with Rodriguez as he faces the emerging doubts about his own faith and the faith of the Japanese people that he has come to serve. Endo sets the mood most beautifully gloomy and dark. One keeps forgetting that this is a work of fiction and not an actual historical account. We are given a window into the lives of everyday Japanese people during the 1600s and the misery that they seem to endure carelessly. The book carries the extremely heavy tone of the story with an ease that can easily lead to a one sitting read. The age old question of why does God allow good people to suffer is handled in a way that is only second to the biblical book of Job. And in a similar manner as Job, Endo does not give the reader a clear answer to this question. We are given clues to the elusive answer throughout the book but are never given any clear-cut answers or revelations into the matter. But thats not the point. Endo is not trying to spell things out as he sees them or give us a parable by which to order our lives by. But instead, has presented to us in the story a way to get at the root of the meaning of true faith and insight into our suffering and the suffering of Christ.
HPB Staff Review -
Gut-wrenching yet essential reading
Daniel S. - 5 years 6 months agoSilence is essential reading for anyone with the slightest love of literature. Set in feudal Japan in the 16th century, the story follows two Jesuit priests are who caught in the middle of Japan's attempt to expel Christianity from their land by torturing all Christian priests into apostasy. Powerful, gripping, and difficult to get through, Shusaku Endo's classic is nonetheless a very rewarding experience. Also, look for the motion picture releasing next year starring Andrew Garfield and Liam Neeson, and directed by Martin Scorsese.
HPB Staff Review