Juvenile Nonfiction

52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.

03. Silence.

52 Books. | February 2009
Endo, Shusaku (trans. by William Johnston)
Taplinger Publishing, 1979 (1966)
2 Comments.

Silence - Shusaku EndoA Portuguese missionary to 17th-century Japan is forced to apostatize. Explores what “suffering for Christ” really looks like — are we willing to be despised, even by our brothers and sisters in Christ, in order to truly love another person? The missionary, Rodrigues, dies in ignominy in a Christian prison in Japan, buried as a Buddhist, but knowing that God was not silent: He spoke to Rodrigues, assuring him that apostasy in his case (unless he denied Christ, other Japanese Christians would be tortured to death) was truer to the spirit of Jesus than stoic martyrdom. A mix of epistolary fiction and omniscient narrative. This is a wonderful novel.

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It is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.

  • I was hoping you’d like it! One of my very very favorites. Not to be read without someone else nearby to hug, however.

    Have you read any other Endo? I liked The Final Martyrs and Samurai, but not really Sea and Poison or When I Whistle.

    e. February 14th. 2009. 5:31 am.

  • I have ‘Life of Jesus’ and ‘The Samurai’ in the queue. I read this book because of you — my memory is long for certain things, including impassioned recommendations.

    joshua. February 14th. 2009. 11:19 am.

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