The Silent Cry traces two brothers, returning to their childhood home, a village in densely forested western Japan. While one brother tries to sort out the aftermath of a friend”s suicide and the birth of a handicapped son, the other embarks on a quixotic mission to incite an uprising among the local youth.

Oe”s description of this struggle to save a disintegrating local culture from a Korean wheeler-dealer called ”the Emperor of the Supermarkets” is as chillingly relevant today as when it was first published in 1967.