Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age

ROUSE UP 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 lives in Tokyo with his wife and three children. Eeyore, his eldest, is mentally ill and during one dramatic outburst brandishes a knife at his mother. Rather than confront the situation, K's reaction is to sit and read in his study. Eventually Eeyore's problems force K back into family life, where his sympathetic readings of William Blake are no longer an escape route, but a vital way-in to understanding his own son.