Song of Sadness — Shusaku Endo

Song of Sadness is a kind of sequel to Endō’s acclaimed early work, The Sea and Poison. Set in the 1970s, the novel revisits Dr. Suguro, now in late middle age, running a modest clinic in Tokyo’s vibrant, seedy Shinjuku district and trying to put behind him a haunting experience from World War II. Weaving together multiple story lines, Endō lays before the reader a cross-section of Tokyo in the 1970s: a vain university professor who leads a humiliating double life; a crusading young reporter determined to pursue aging war criminals; two feckless college students as empty of ideals as they are of purpose; an old man dying of cancer; a quixotic foreigner named Gaston; and Suguro. With a vision as humane as it is unflinching, Endō examines the often impossible complexities of real forgiveness in a world of inscrutable cruelty and suffering.