Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Prize-Winning Novelist,To Lecture Feb. 13 At Penn State

1-31-97

University Park, Pa. -- Kenzaburo Oe, a Nobel Prize-winning novelist, will speak about his personal life and its influence on his writing on Thursday, Feb. 13, in 112 Kern Building at Penn State's University Park campus.

Oe, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1994, was described by the Nobel committee as a author who "with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."

Born in 1935 in a rural Japanese island village, he won Japan's premier literary honor, the Akutagawa Prize, for his novella, "The Catch." His other works have been described as "magical realism," although his novels and stories also express his ongoing critique of Japanese society and politics.

Oe's international reputation began to grow after the translation into English of "A Personal Matter" (Grove), a poignant tale about a father's dealing with the birth of a mentally handicapped child -- fiction that was clearly connected to Oe's real-life experiences with his son, Hikaru. Other Oe books available in translation include: "Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids" and "A Quiet Life," both published by Grove, "The Silent Cry" (Kodansha), and "Hiroshima Notes" (Marion Boyars). "A Quiet Life" was also made into a Japanese film.

Oe's lecture, "My Life and Literature," will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 13. It is being presented by the East Asian Studies Committee, the East Asian Fund for the College of the Liberal Arts, and the Department of Comparative Literature, and sponsored by several University programs or units and two private firms.

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Editors: For more information, contact Steven Heine at (814) 865-3403 or sxh23@psu.edu. For other Penn State news, please visit the Penn State University Relations home page, on the World Wide Web at <http://www.psu.edu/ur

Contacts:
Alan Janesch (814) 865-7517 (office) axj12@psu.edu
Christy Rambeau (814) 865-7517 (office) cmr7@psu.edu