Approaching Silence

Endo Shusaku is celebrated as one of Japan‘s great modern novelists and is often described as "Japan‘s Graham Greene." Silence is considered by many Japanese and Western literary critics to be his masterpiece. Approaching Silence is both a celebration of this award-winning novel as well as a significant contribution to the growing body of work on literature and religion. It represents the first attempt to feature an engaged, patient contact with this pivotal text. Approaching Silence assembles and features eminent scholars writing from Christian, Buddhist, literary, and historical perspectives, taking up, for example, the uneasy alliance between faith and doubt; the complexities of discipleship and martyrdom; the face of Christ; and, the bodhisattva ideal as well as the nature of suffering. Some essays will look through a wider lens on Endo‘s work, comparing Silence to other works of Endo as well as to the fiction of other authors. Approaching Silence serves as a reader for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in religion and literature, inter-religious dialogue, comparative literature, Japanese literature, and textual reception.