Oe Kenzaburo was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. This critical study examines Oe's entire career from 1957 - 2006 and includes chapters on Oe's later novels not published in English. Through close readings at different points in Oe's career Yasuko Claremont establishes the spiritual path that he has taken in its three major phrases of nihilism, atonement, and salvation, all highlighted against a background of violence and suicidal despair that saturate his pages. Oe uses myth in two distinct ways: to link mankind to the archetypal past, and as a critique of contemporary...