Author Description

Closely mirroring the author's own travels in the early 1970s throughout Poland and Italy in pursuit of the miracles ascribed to St. Maximilian Kolbe, the work takes the reader on a geographical and spiritual journey of immense riches. Sono's narrator sensitively explores cultural differences, religious faith, science and the question of miracles, and the atrocity of Auschwitz where St. Kolbe offered up his life in exchange for a condemned prisoner. Already described as a "minor classic" of Japanese literature before it was translated into English, Doak's translation makes available this remarkable work by one of postwar Japan's most talented writers to a broader international audience.