Illusion of Words

Book: Silence

Finally got a hold of a copy of Silence, by Shusaku Endo. I have been wanting to read this book for a long time, and it did not disappoint. Finished the entire thing in one afternoon. These days I don’t really read much (the last new book I read was Gary Neville’s autobiography couple of weeks ago….), but this book was good. I heard about it from English lit class last year, my prof recommended the book. Also heard that they are making a movie version, coming out in 2013. Hm, probably in 2 years the interest in this book will skyrocket. But you heard it here first (maybe).

Anyway, enough with the rambling. This book is about the persecution of Catholic Christians in the 17th century. In Japan. Wait, you say, Japan had a history of Catholic Christians? Apparently so. But Christianity was eventually banned somewhere down the line, and terrible persecution came upon all missionaries, priests, and converts. The book ‘Silence’ follows the journey of a Portuguese priest, Rodrigues, who, along with his friend, goes to Japan wanting to minister to the underground Catholic Japanese.

In the beginning all seems quite well, the two priests able to do their duty (confessions, mass, all that), but as the story moves along and things happen, Rodrigues finds himself struggling with the question: Why is God silent in the midst of all the suffering? The peasants were being martyred - if they weren’t, just trying to survive under heavy taxes was already terrible enough. By the end of the book, I felt like I’d just watched a TV series, where it is always so strange to go back to the first episode and see the ‘innocence’ of the protagonists that have undergone so much throughout the series. The book isn’t that long though, finished in a couple of hours - for reference I finished ‘Gone with the Wind’ in 3 days (and that was spending every spare, waking hour reading it). Still it was engrossing enough to give me that feeling. Absolutely recommended read, thought-provoking and interesting.

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