What do Amos Oz and Kenzaburō Ōe have in common?
writer
Amos Oz
Amos Oz (Hebrew: עמוס עוז‎ ; born Amos Klausner; May 4, 1939) is an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual.
 He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba.
 He is regarded as Israel's most famous living author.
Kenzaburō Ōe
Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎 , Ōe Kenzaburō , born 31 January 1935) is a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature.
 His novels, short stories and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons, nuclear power, social non-conformism, and existentialism.
 Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today".
A Personal Matter
A Personal Matter (Japanese: 個人的な体験 ; Kojinteki na taiken) is a novel by Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe.
 Written in 1964, the novel is semi-autobiographical and dark in tone.
 It tells the story of Bird, a man who must come to terms with the birth of his mentally disabled son. Ōe Kenzaburō Prize
The Kenzaburō Ōe Prize (大江健三郎賞) is a Japanese literary award sponsored by Kodansha (講談社) and established in 2006 to commemorate both the 100th anniversary of Kodansha's establishment and 50th anniversary of the writing life of Kenzaburō Ōe (大江健三郎).
 The award is for Japanese literary novels published in the last year.
 The winning work is selected solely by Ōe.
 The winner receives no cash award, but the novel is translated into other languages such as English, French and German for publication.
 Kenzaburō Ōe has an open conversation with the winner. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids (芽むしり仔撃ち "Memushiri kouchi "; also known as "Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring") is a 1958 novel by Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe.
 It is Ōe's first novel, written when he was 23 years old. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (ねじまき鳥クロニクル , Nejimakitori Kuronikuru ) is a novel published in 1994–1995 by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
 The American translation and its British adaptation, dubbed the "only official translations" (English) are by Jay Rubin and were first published in 1997.
 For this novel, Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award, which was awarded to him by one of his harshest former critics, Kenzaburō Ōe. Somersault (novel)
Somersault (宙返り "Chūgaeri") is a 1999 novel by Kenzaburō Ōe.
 It is about two former leaders of a religious cult as they try to establish a new movement, a possible nuclear catastrophe, and religious sects in everyday society.
 It received inspiration from the Aum Shinrikyo cult and their Tokyo subway sarin attack of 1995.
 The English translation, by Philip Gabriel, first appeared in 2003.
 It was Ōe's first novel since he won the 1994 literature Nobel Prize.
 It was published in the United States by Grove Press.
 The book was published in the United Kingdom by Atlantic Books. John Nathan
John Nathan (born 1940) is the translator of Japanese works written by celebrated authors such as Yukio Mishima and Kenzaburō Ōe.
 Nathan is also an Emmy-award winning producer, writer and director of many films about Japanese culture and society and American business. The Game of Contemporaneity
The Game of Contemporaneity or dojidai gemu (同時代ゲーム) is a 1979 novel by the Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe.
 "The Game of Contemporaneity" was originally inspired on Diego Rivera’s mural 'Dream on a Sunday Afternoon in the Central Alameda'.
 Oe's approach to history and story-telling, like in the mural, exposes the themes of simultaneity, ambiguity and thus complexity.
 The story centres itself around the alternative world of the dissident samurai, as opposed to that of the Emperor.
 The samurai turn into demons after being chased into the forest.
 The story of the village serves as a microcosmic representation of the history of the nation as a whole.
 It has its own creation myth and fertility goddess, as well as having a composite healer/trickster called: The One Who Destroys.
 Although the novel exposes the themes of marginalisation and outsiderhood, it also provides hope for a new beginning.
 This emphasizes the central theme of the novel: simultaneous ambiguity, in the amalgamation of past and present, fact and dream, as well as history and myth.
 Oe uses satire, parody and black humour to describe the many deeds and events of the samurai.
 This culminates in the Fifty-Day War, in which the samurai and the imperial army battle one another, with The One Who Destroys leading the battle against The No-Name Captain of the imperial guard.
 It ends in the samurai surrendering to avoid the destruction of the forest (mori).
 The word 'mori' in itself is ambivalent in that in Japanese it conjures an image of regeneration or rebirth and in Latin that of death. Hikari Ōe
Hikari Ōe (大江 光 , Ōe Hikari , born June 13, 1963) is a Japanese composer who has autism.
 He is the son of Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe and Yukari Ikeuchi, the younger sister of director Juzo Itami.