The Sea and Poison Author:Shusaku Endo, Michael Gallagher This powerful novel, The Sea and Poison, 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 vivisect... more »ion, 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 Catholic than as a Catholic writer. Endo is the only major Japanese novelist who has confronted the problem of individual responsibility 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.'« less