Endo, Shusaku

Shusaku Endo was born in Tokyo in 1923 and died in 1996. After his parents divorced, he and his mother converted to Catholicism a faith which is central to many of his tales. He is widely regarded as Japan's leading writer and has won all his country's major literary prizes, including the Akutagawa, the Noma, the Shincho, and the Tanizaki.