A Personal Matter

From the Nobel Prizewinning author: "One of the great short novels of the 20th century" (The Wall Street Journal).

Internationally acclaimed as one of the world's most influential writers, Kenzabur e brings to the fore the post-WWII rage and anxiety of a decorous society in this "deathly black comedy . . . dripping with nuclear terror" (The Japan Times).

Bird is an antisocial twenty-seven-year-old intellectual hanging on to a failing marriage with whiskey. He dreams of going to Africa where the sky sprawls with possibilities. Then, as though walloped by a massive invisible fist, Bird's Utopian fantasies are shattered when his wife gives birth to what he calls their "monster baby." Now, Bird is left with one question: How can he and his wife spend the rest of their lives with this damaged thing clinging to their backs?

As shameful, disgraceful, and unthinkable a desire as it is, Bird has an answer. Not sealed. Not just yet. Not before Bird flees on a bender of indiscriminate (and frustratingly impotent) sex, hard liquor, self-delusion, and most terrifying of allself-discovery.

"Very close to a perfect contemporary novel." The New York Times

"An astonishing novel." Mother Jones

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