7.2 /10 1 Votes
Originally published December 2000 | 3.6/5 Goodreads | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Changeling (取り替え子 (チェンジリング) Torikae ko (Chenjiringu)) is a 2000 novel by Kenzaburō Ōe. It is the first book of a trilogy. It was translated into English by Deborah Boliver Boehm (ISBN 9780802119360), and published in the United States by Grove Press. Its English publication appeared in 2010. Boehm uses American English heavily in her translation. The United Kingdom version is published by Atlantic Books.
Contents
Plot
In the novel, a filmmaker named Goro Hanawa commits suicide. Goro had appeared happy before his suicide. His best friend, a novelist named Kogito Choko, discovers the suicide via an audiotape recorded by Goro; he had sent forty tapes to Kogito. Chikashi Choko, Goro's sister and Kogito's wife, also learns that Goro died. To learn why Goro had killed himself, Kogito listens to the tapes. Scott Esposito of the Los Angeles Times said that "What he finds is a rambling series of discourses on everything from the friendship they've shared since they were teens in the 1950s to Goro's ideas about art and life, their shared admiration for Rimbaud and a few secrets from the past."
Characters
Reception
Scott Esposito of the Los Angeles Times said that the book "offers evidence that the Japanese master has regained his footing." Christopher Tayler of The Guardian said that, because a Western reader may not have context that a Japanese reader would have, it would be more difficult for him or her to get fulfillment from the novel.