Scandal
Shūsaku Endō's late novel follows a respected Catholic novelist whose public reputation collides with photographs that place him in Tokyo's sordid night district; a double, or something like one, seems to be acting out the sins the writer has only imagined. The book is less a mystery than an inquiry into shame, faith, and the Japanese discomfort with religious confession. Endō treats the scandal as a spiritual wound rather than a tabloid event.This Dodd, Mead bilingual edition presents the text in English and Japanese, a format that turns the novel into an object of study as much as reading. The parallel pages make the book's concerns with doubles and hidden selves feel almost built into the design. For readers interested in Endō's moral unease and the architecture of confession.
