Kenzaburo Oe was born on January 31, 1935. He was born in a small village on the island of Shikoku, Japan. A winner of numerous Japanese literary prizes, Oe came to manhood during World War II and the occupation. At Tokyo University, Oe studied Jean-Paul Sartre and absorbed many popular leftist ideas. These influences appear in his early writings, which often deal with contemporary issues. With the birth of his deformed son, father and son became the new focus of his work. In his two books, A Personal Matter (1964) and A Healing Family (1996), Oe describes the pain involved with accepting his brain-damaged son and the small victories involved their lives as his son progressed. In 1994, Oe won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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