Shusaku Endo - Silence (Picador, 2003) ***½

Endo's novel "Silence", originally published in 1966, has become famous by the movie Martin Scorcese made of it. It's the story of a Portuguese priest, Sebastian Rodrigues, who sails to Japan in 1640 to find out what happened with priests who moved to Japan before, and who after converting many Japanese to christianity, are now oppressed, including the renunciation of his faith by his predecessor, under torture.

Even if he is soon captured by the Japanese, their only interest is to make him renounce his faith to, but now by torturing him personally, but by torturing his fellow christians to make him change his mind.

It is a story of changing allegiances, not only by people, but especially in the mind of Sebastian Rodrigues himself, and his moral dilemma: choosing for the people or for his God.

The novel is based on historical fact, which makes it all the more poignant. Endo's narrative is strong and mature: he depicts the internal struggle of the priest with respect and good psychological insights. Endo himself was a christian, and I'm not. I can imagine it has even more power of ambiguity if you are a christian to confronted by the silence of an absent god whose adherents undergo the most atrocious fate.

It's an interesting read, but not a novel I would want to re-read.