Kenzaburo Oe (Ōse, Shikoku, 1935 - 2023) was an influential Japanese writer, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994. He moved to Tokyo in 1954 to study French Literature at the University of Tokyo, where he was influenced by Sartre and existentialist philosophy. His extensive work, marked by existential anguish, post-Hiroshima Japanese identity, and the experience with his son Hikari's disability, merges grotesque realism with profound humanism. Ōe was a fierce critic of Japanese militarism and an advocate for pacifist values. His literature, often dark but always hopeful, explores human fragility and resilience in the face of the absurd.
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