Endo was runner-up for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. Here we meet the gentle, self-sacrificing French youth Gaston, whose trusting love of both people and animals makes all who meet him change their lives for the better. Gaston's adventures in modern Japan are presented as a kind of fable, yet with complete realism and keen social satire. Endo's criticism of Japanese values and society is scathing. His benignly satirical revelation of the inadequacy of materialism...makes this strange novel, often funny and often grim, a fable of spectral luminosity."" - Sunday Times.