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thisotherbookaccount's review
4.0
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The thing about your favourite author being dead is that you have to ration his books. I limit myself to one Endō book a year, and I’m happy to report that The Final Martyrs, his only short story collection, is among his best.
Written and published between 1959 and 1985, the 11 short stories here chart the entirety of Endō’s career. Fans of his works will recognise many familiar themes, from Catholicism and mortality to sexuality, regrets and redemption, as if these were test runs for his longer novels.
The titular story, The Final Martyrs, treads similar grounds as those in Silence, with a small but persistent group of Christians trying to live out their lives under persecution. The Last Supper, too, has echoes of The Sea and Poison, both dealing with war and guilt.
There are several stories that, according to Endō himself, are semi-autographical in nature, though you never quite know where the facts end and the fiction begins. Life, for example, is told from the perspective of a young Japanese boy not unlike Endō, who also grew up in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. It’s a moving story about an occupation told from a child’s POV, and the secrets we keep that eventually festers and turns into guilt. The Sixty-Year-Old Man, too, sees a fictionalised version Endō as he struggles with his age, a desire for young girls, and how it somehow parallels the persecution of Christ. I know, I know, it sounds like a stretch, but Endō makes it work.
My favourite is Heading Home, which explores the meaning of ‘home’ and ‘mortality’ in three drastically different ways. There are passages about family and loss that truly worked on a deep-seated level for me, and the story ends on a quiet but haunting note that will ring long after the book is done.
I wasn’t expecting much from this collection, but I’m proud to have read it. I also want to give a shout out to Gessel, who is one of my favourite translators of Japanese fiction.
The thing about your favourite author being dead is that you have to ration his books. I limit myself to one Endō book a year, and I’m happy to report that The Final Martyrs, his only short story collection, is among his best.
Written and published between 1959 and 1985, the 11 short stories here chart the entirety of Endō’s career. Fans of his works will recognise many familiar themes, from Catholicism and mortality to sexuality, regrets and redemption, as if these were test runs for his longer novels.
The titular story, The Final Martyrs, treads similar grounds as those in Silence, with a small but persistent group of Christians trying to live out their lives under persecution. The Last Supper, too, has echoes of The Sea and Poison, both dealing with war and guilt.
There are several stories that, according to Endō himself, are semi-autographical in nature, though you never quite know where the facts end and the fiction begins. Life, for example, is told from the perspective of a young Japanese boy not unlike Endō, who also grew up in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. It’s a moving story about an occupation told from a child’s POV, and the secrets we keep that eventually festers and turns into guilt. The Sixty-Year-Old Man, too, sees a fictionalised version Endō as he struggles with his age, a desire for young girls, and how it somehow parallels the persecution of Christ. I know, I know, it sounds like a stretch, but Endō makes it work.
My favourite is Heading Home, which explores the meaning of ‘home’ and ‘mortality’ in three drastically different ways. There are passages about family and loss that truly worked on a deep-seated level for me, and the story ends on a quiet but haunting note that will ring long after the book is done.
I wasn’t expecting much from this collection, but I’m proud to have read it. I also want to give a shout out to Gessel, who is one of my favourite translators of Japanese fiction.
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