Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age

This is a virtuoso novel of extraordinary power that returns to the themes that haunt so much of Oe's work: family, responsibility, writing and the experience of being a parent to a disabled child.K is a famous writer living in Tokyo with his wife and three children, one of whom has been, since birth, mentally disabled. A highly cerebral man who often retreats from everyday life into his own world of abstraction - usually the poetry of William Blake - K is confronted by his wife with the reality that his child, Eeyore, has been doing disturbing things: behaving aggressively, asserting he's dead, even brandishing a knife at his mother.

K's struggle to understand his family and his place within it, leads him to a startling re-evaluation of himself, his attitudes and his responsibilities.

Bittersweet, inspiring and sometimes hilarious, Rouse Up is the work of an unparalleled writer at his dazzling best.