‘Endo is one of the world’s greatest novelists’ Washington Post

A group of Japanese tourists journey to the sacred River Ganges, each on a secret personal pilgrimage. Widower Isobe mourns for the devoted wife he neglected; gentle children’s writer Numanda seeks out the bird he believes saved his life; Kiguchi is haunted by his time as a soldier along the Highway of Death; and Mitsuko reconnects with the classmate she tempted away from the church and cruelly discarded.

At the softly lapping shores of the river – where the faithful come to bathe during their final moments – self-knowledge is sought and memories put to rest. Set against a rich backdrop of 90s India, Deep River is a beautifully moving story showing Endo at the height of his powers as a chronicler of religious experience.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Van C. Gessel.

Shusaku Endo (1923-1996) was one of the greatest novelists of postwar Japan. Baptised as a Roman Catholic as a child, his work explores the relationship between East and West from his unique perspective as a Japanese Christian. Endo won the Akutgawa Prize and the Yomiuri Literary Prize, was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times, and received an Order of Culture from the Japanese government. His historical fiction novel Silence was adapted into a 2016 film of the same name by the director Martin Scorsese.

Van C. Gessel (b. 1950) is the former Dean of the College of Humanities at Brigham Young University, and the foremost translator into English of the work of Shusaku Endo. He holds a doctorate in Japanese literature from Columbia University, and in 2018 received Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun for his contribution as a translator of Japanese literature.