"Football in the Year of Man'en" Author: [Japanese] Kenzaburo Oe Publisher: People's Literature Publishing House Translator: Qiu Yafen

After the protagonist of the novel, Takashi, was thwarted in his opposition to the Japan-US Security Treaty, he first went to the United States and then returned to his hometown. In a valley covered with dense forests, he intended to emulate the way his great-grandfather led a peasant uprising a hundred years ago. He organized a football team to incite a "modern riot"... The story cleverly interweaves reality and fiction, present and past, city and mountain village, Eastern culture and Western culture. By depicting the fierce conflict of opposition and anxiety under various shadows, it explores how mankind can get out of the "forest" that symbolizes terror and anxiety... The novel is set in the valleys and forests of Shikoku, Japan, and depicts a strange world intertwined with history and reality, legend and imagination. It is a landmark work of Oe's literary maturity.

Kenzaburo Oe (1935-), a famous contemporary Japanese writer, was born in Ose Village, Kita District, Ehime Prefecture (now Uchiko Town). In 1957, he published the novel "Luxury of the Dead" in "Literary World", and began to attract attention from the literary world. In 1958, the novel "Feeding" won the 39th Akutagawa Prize. In 1964, the novel "Personal Experience" won the 11th Shinchosha Literary Prize. In 1967, the novel "Football in the Year of Man'en" won the third Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize. In 1994, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the second Japanese writer to win this honor after Yasunari Kawabata in 26 years. "Football in the Year of Man'en" is set in the valleys and forests of Shikoku, depicting a strange world intertwined with history and reality, legend and imagination. It is a landmark work of Oe's literary maturity.