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Silence

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Silence

By: Shusaku Endo
Narrated by: David Holt
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Recipient of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, it has been called Endo's supreme achievement" and "one of the twentieth century's finest novels".

Considered controversial ever since its first publication, it tackles the thorniest religious issues of belief and faith head on.

A novel of historical fiction, it is the story of a Jesuit missionary sent to seventeenth century Japan, who endured persecution that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion.

©1966 Shusaku Endo (P)2009 Audible Ltd Literary Fiction Emotionally Gripping Thought-Provoking Fiction Genre Fiction Inspiring

Critic reviews

“Brian Moore’s Black Robe, about the fate, usually violent, of 17th century Jesuit priests bent on converting the native Canadians had to be the last grisly word on the subject. Or so I thought. Then I head this … Utterly mesmerizing.” Sue Arnold, The Guardian

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The Samurai Audiobook By Shusaku Endo cover art
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Thought-provoking Narrative • Powerful Storytelling • Complex Moral Dilemmas • Profound Theological Exploration

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Excellent story that explores the problem of evil and the silence of God. recommended for Christian and nonchristian readers alike. audio narrator was fantastic though his pronunciation of a few Japanese words was quirky to me as a native speaker.

definitely would recommend anyone and everyone read this at least once.

Excellent read for Christians and nonchristians

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was not expecting that too be as impact full as it was.

highly recommend

life changing!

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“Silence” is novel that follows two Portuguese priests that travel to Japan during the era of Christianity’s early growth over nations and was banned in Japan. Japanese officials were torturing young priests and Japanese Christians, forcing them to apostatize. Our main character is Sebastian Rodrigues; he is frightened of being captured by the officials, being tortured, and seeing others renounce their faith, but he feels he would overcome it as did Jesus. As he sees what is happening to the Japanese Christians he starts to question himself, and even his beliefs, and he questions god for his silence as the people who follow his word are being persecuted and apostatized. Sebastian wonders if the work they are doing in Japan is doing more bad then good, ultimately, and in the end has to make a severely difficult choice. “Silence” is a psychological experience that not only remains with you long after the final page, but weeks since you close the book entirely. I am not a religious man, but this spiritual experience flows not only through the main character, the historians who studied for this, but me as well. It was a must-read, and honestly, I just started it over again.

Amazing

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What is faith, and to what lengths is the believer willing to be faithful? That is the underlying theme of Endo’s marvelous story of Christian persecutions in 1600s Japan. Where Scorsese’s excellent adaptation gave visual context, the written version plumbs the depths of Father Rodriguez’s psyche in face of hardship, loneliness, betrayal, psychological gamesmanship, and doubt. A true classic deserving to be better known, especially in our current world where lies and deceit have become the common way of life.

Silence - the story behind the movie

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Shusaku Endo’s Silence (1966; translated by William Johnston 1969) is a compact, grueling novel. It explores the nature of faith and love in a persecuted Christian context, as Portuguese missionary Father Rodrigues sneaks into a 17th-century Japan that has become intensely intolerant of Catholicism, Christianity, and missionaries. Rodrigues’ goal is twofold, to find out what happened to his revered teacher, Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized and gone Japanese, and to nurture the seed of Christianity planted in Japan by earlier missionaries before it can completely wither away.

The most moving and absorbing parts of the novel concern a weak and servile outcast apostate Japanese fisherman called Kichijiro (Father Rodrigues’ personal Judas), Rodrigues’ intense struggle to reconcile God’s love with His deafening silence in the face of such terrible exploitation and persecution of humble Japanese peasants, and his even more intense struggle to decide whether apostatizing would be an act of love and self-sacrifice consonant with Jesus’ compassion or an act of selfish weakness and betrayal. Endo does not give clear and final answers to such fraught questions. But through its depiction of earthy, kind, steadfast Christian peasants who would be tortured and die rather than step or spit on an image of Mary or Jesus, his novel does debunk the Japanese authorities’ official view that Japan is a unique country where Christianity cannot grow.

Endo writes many vivid details of life in 17th century Japan: feudal system, crime and punishment, religious festivals, food, names, international trade, etc.

He writes a sublime moment when Father Rodrigues, fleeing pursuit in the mountains all alone and deprived of food and water, happens at one point to look up and see the face of Kichijiro with the beloved face of his imaginary ideal Christ transposed over the unshaven, yellow-toothed, degraded face of his betrayer.

Even I, an atheist with no great love for Christianity or missionary work, found the novel absorbing and moving. It reads like a Christian Heart of Darkness, with Rodrigues as Marlow and Ferreira as Kurtz. Did Ferreira really apostatize? Is he still alive? Will Rodrigues ever meet him? If so, what will come of the encounter?

Endo’s novel must challenge Christian readers with some uncomfortable questions even as it reaffirms their faith.

This audiobook edition (well read by David Holt) begins with a compact and interesting foreword by Martin Scorsese in which he explains the novel’s twenty-year appeal for him, especially in its assertion that faith and questioning go hand in hand and in its focus on the role of Judas (but you should probably read this after finishing the novel, as it may contain spoilers!). Endo’s introduction then establishes the historical context of the novel. The novel is then mostly told from Rodrigues’ journal-letters to his superiors back home, till near the end it dramatically changes to a third person point of view, and concludes with an appendix of Dutch and Japanese official log entries, some of which in context pack revelatory emotional punches.

Silence is recommended for people interested in feudal Japan, missionary history, and matters of faith.

“And like the sea God was silent.”

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