Word: ooka
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Dates: during 1957-1957
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FIRES ON THE PLAIN (246 pp.)-Shohei Ooka-Knopf...
Captured and sent home at war's end, Tamura is a madman and knows it. Six years later Tamura writes a book. Having committed himself to a madhouse, he asks his wife to divorce him, and she does. There Novelist Ooka leaves him, trying to figure out who or what he is. It seems unlikely that he will, though there are times when he thinks he might be an angel. "But if I am an angel of God, why am I so grieved? Why is this heart of mine, which should now be free of all earthly attachments...
...Fires on the Plain, Japanese Author Shohei Ooka has written what critics in his native land think is their first well-written book about the war. The novel has sold 100,000 copies, and it is not hard to see why. In translation it has moments of obscurity, but it still conveys powerfully the gradual crackup of a war-shattered man who, in his last extremity, can relate himself neither to humanity...