Silence

This is an extremely powerful book about faith taking place in 17th century Japan where Christianity is outlawed and Christians are brutally tortured and forced to renounce their beliefs. Two Jesuit priests go there to help the Christian peasants and also hope to find their former mentor who is rumoured to have renounced his faith under torture.
This book is not an easy read as it's very realistic and depressing and to my knowledge, mostly historically accurate to the time period. It's hard to read about innocent peasants having to die in horrible ways just because of what they believed in. Also the loneliness that Father Rodrigues experiences, physically and spiritually, in Japanese prisons as he doesn't understand why God is remaining silent in his time of misery is really depressing.
The first part of the book was written in letters from Father Rodrigues and the second part was a third person narrator. Usually, I'm not one to enjoy epistolary novels but this was an exception as I thoroughly enjoyed it; the writing did not become lazy as it sometimes can when writing in letters. As usual, I enjoyed third person narration more but the epistolary didn't take anything away from my enjoyment of the novel.
I think anyone could read this and appreciate the beautiful writing of Shusaku Endo but it will particularly strike a chord in Christian readers. The ending to this book is amazing and I think it could be interpreted differently depending on the reader, which is very interesting. There's a lot to take away from this book and it could warrant a few rereads.

5 stars