The Sea and Poison

Shusaku Endo

TRANSLATED FROM THE JAPANESE AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MICHAEL GALLAGHER

First British Commonwealth edition, 1972, Jacket design by Keith Cunningham

This edition is in impeccable condition. There are no signs of wear on either the pages of the book or the dust jacket. It is as good as new.

This powerful novel, The Sea and Poison, was the first of Endo's works to be published in England. It describes the personal disintegration of a Japanese doctor who is obliged to participate in the vivisection of prisoners of war. He remains obsessed by feelings of horror and guilt, reliving his experiences as a young doctor in a wartime hospital. There, the senior staff induce him to assist at a vivisection, during which the doctor in charge -- who is married to a German woman -- refuses cocaine to his American victim, whom he declines to consider as a patient.

In his introduction, Michael Gallagher writes: 'He (Endo) would rather be known as a writer who happened to be a Catholic than as a Catholic writer. Endo is the only major Japanese novelist who has confronted the problem of individual responsiblity in wartime. He is, I think, capable of achieving a position in world literature at least as high as some of his countrymen now far better known in the West.'