Silence
Picador · first published 1966 · 256 pages
In the seventeenth century, two young priests slip secretly into Japan to learn what became of their old teacher.
Told through letters and close narration, it stays with one man's doubts as the danger tightens around him.
For a night of questions without easy answers.
About this book
Word reaches Portugal that Ferreira, a respected missionary in Japan, has renounced his faith under torture. Sebastião Rodrigues, once his student, refuses to believe it and enters the country in secret, where Christians must worship in hiding. He depends on Kichijirō, a frail and unreliable guide. What stays is the long ache of a prayer that seems to meet only silence, and the hard questions it leaves about faith and weakness.