Books like Death by Water

Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe is internationally acclaimed for his groundbreaking, incisive examination of humanity’s struggle through modernity. In Death by Water, his recurring protagonist and literary alter ego returns to his hometown village in search of a red trunk fabled to hold documents revealing the details of his father’s death during World War II: details that will serve as the foundation for his new, and final, novel.The book that he wishes to write would examine the turbulent relationship he had with his father, and the guilt he feels about being absent the night his father drowned in a storm-swollen river; but how to write about a man he never really knew? When his estranged sister unexpectedly calls, she offers Choko a remedy - she has in her possession an old and mysterious red trunk, the contents of which promise to unlock the many secrets of the man who disappeared from their lives decades before.When the contents of the trunk turn out to offer little clarity, he abandons the novel in creative despair. Floundering as an artist, he’s haunted by fear that he may never write his tour de force. But when he collaborates with an avant-garde theater troupe dramatizing his early novels, Choko is revitalized and he finds the will to continue investigating his father’s demise.Diving into the turbulent depths of legacy and mortality, Death by Water is an exquisite exploration of resurfacing national and personal trauma, and the ways that storytelling can mend political, social, and familial rifts.