Kenzaburō Ōe

Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids recounts the exploits of 15 teenage reformatory boys evacuated in wartime to a remote mountain village where they are feared and detested by the local peasants. When plague breaks out, the villagers flee, blocking the boys inside the deserted town. Their brief attempt to build autonomous …

Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age! is a 1983 semi-autobiographical novel by Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe, about his day-to-day life with his mentally handicapped son, Hikari and the effect that William Blake's poetry has had on both his life and work.

These four novels display Oe’s passionate and original vision. Oe was ten when American jeeps first drove into the mountain village where he lived, and his literary work reveals the tension and ambiguity forged by the collapse of values of his childhood on the one hand and the confrontation with American writers on …