Kenzaburo Oe is internationally recognized as one of the world"s finest writers. When he won the Nobel Prize nearly ten years ago, he announced that he would no longer be writing fiction—or, if he did, that his future work would be radically different from the highly autobiographical fiction he was known for. Now, with Somersault, Oe has broken his silence and shared with us the result of his artistic reorientation, in a magnificent story of the charisma of leaders, the danger of zealotry, and the mystery of faith.