Wonderful Fool

Gaston Bonaparte, a young Frenchman, visits Tokyo to stay with his pen-pal Takamori. His appearance is a bitter disappointment to his new friends and his behavior causes them acute embarrassment. He is a trusting person with a simple love for others, and he continues to trust even after they have demonstrated deceit and betrayal. He spends his time not sightseeing but making friends with street children, stray dogs, prostitutes, and gangsters. This novel charts his misadventures with sharp irony, satire, and objectivity.

Endo was runner-up for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. Here we meet the gentle, self-sacrificing French youth Gaston, whose trusting love of both people and animals makes all who meet him change their lives for the better. Gaston's adventures in modern Japan are presented as a kind of fable, yet with complete realism and keen social satire. Endo's criticism of Japanese values and society is scathing. His benignly satirical revelation of the inadequacy of materialism...makes this strange novel, often funny and often grim, a fable of spectral luminosity." - Sunday Times."

Publishers Weekly

In Japanese novelist Endo's 1959 satire, an awkward but noble young Frenchman challenges the self-satisfied moral apathy of a Japanese family. (Oct.)

Shusaku Endo is widely regarded as one of the greatest Japanese authors of the late 20th century. He has won many major literary awards and was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. His novels, which have been translated into 28 languages, include Deep River, The Samurai, Scandal, The Sea and Poison, and Silence.