Book Review: DEEP RIVER by Shusaku Endo

Deep River by Shūsaku Endō
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"God has many faces. As do I... the real dialogue takes place when you believe that God has many faces, and that he exists in all religions... I don't think God exists exclusively in the churches and chapels of Europe. I think he is also among the Jews, Buddhists and Hindus."

Endo fascinates. Like forces of nature, his books go beyond liking or disliking, they simply ARE. To read them is akin to bathing in a boiling hot spring: both painful and cleansing, and always UNFORGETTABLE. This sixth one I've read has got to be the most powerful thus far (arguably even more than his most famous book, SILENCE). It's also the most "catholic," in the universal sense, and certainly the most ambitious as he sought to reconcile Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity like three streams originating from one source that flow back to the Mother Ganges, the river of rebirth. For Endo, this deep river IS God: "A deep river of humanity and we are all part of it... this river embraces everything about mankind... so deep I feel as though it's not just for the Hindus but for everyone."

It begins with a bus full of Japanese tourists on the eve of Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984. Despite their outward homogenous appearance, each one harbors unique past trauma: some have lost life partners and are seeking their reincarnations, others have survived death marches in Burma by eating human flesh and seek redemption. The more fortunate of them wrestle only with a bone-deep search for love and meaning, in a post-war era that brought greater prosperity with the advent of consumerism, but a matching emptiness of soul.

Endo brings us to the ancient Indian city of Varanasi, which predates Christianity, where pilgrims go to die, where the faithful bathe in waters freshly strewn with the ashes of their beloved dead. All seek enlightenment and rebirth. All find a version of what they seek, though perhaps not in the form they were expecting.

Endo writes scathingly of the ignorance of those who view the rites handed down throughout millennia, through the lens of their narrow life experience, then proceeds to take us into the inner workings of three of the great faiths in a truly awesome display of literary imagination.

One of the main characters, a priest-in-training, responded to a nihilistic young woman by telling her that it didn't matter what name she called Jesus or God. He alternates between calling our Lord "Onion" and "Love," as if to underscore that the name of God doesn't really matter, as it changes with each of his different faces shown to different races.

I was particularly struck with the parallel Endo drew between Christ who gave all out of love, and the Hindu goddess Chamunda: "The mother of India... an old woman reduced to skin and bones and gasping for breath. Despite it all, she was still a mother... She is ugly and worn with age, and she groans under the weight of the suffering she bears.. She offers milk from her withered breasts to the children who line up before her. Her belly has caved in from hunger, and scorpions have stung her... enduring all these ills and pains, she offers milk from her sagging breasts to mankind... She displays all the sufferings of the Indian people."

We revisit a familiar Endo theme: that God is to be found in the suffering of sinful men, and that "even if I try to abandon God, God won't abandon me."

Endo effortlessly quotes from French novelists, the Amida Sutra, and the Book of Isaiah. The result is a tapestry that no other writer has dared to weave in novel form. To achieve all of this, to explain complex theological concepts while using accessible language and maintaining the tension required in all great narratives, is truly inspired.

No wonder that, out of all his many works, this is one of only two books that were buried along with the author (I can't find any mention of the second book... perhaps it was SILENCE?).

Love. God. Warmth of life. If you loved Thomas Merton and Graham Greene, you will love Shusaku Endo, and especially this particular novel (which was apparently made into an award winning film in 1995!).

View all my reviews