SOURCE: "Deep Endo," in Commonweal, Vol. CXXII, No. 10, May 19, 1995, pp. 34-5.

[In the following review, O'Connell asserts that in Endo's Deep River and his The Final Martyrs the author is reiterating, although sometimes expanding on his major theme: the struggle to fuse Christianity and Eastern culture.]

In two newly translated volumes, a novel and a story collection, Japanese Catholic Shusaku Endo reiterates and sometimes expands upon his major theme—the frustration of trying to fuse Western Christianity and Eastern culture.

The novel Deep River may take its title from the Negro spiritual that provides its epigraph, but the setting here is not the American South—it is India, the destination of a Japanese tourist group, and the river is the Ganges, "so deep," in the words of the sometimes cynical character Mitsuko, "I feel as though it's not just for the Hindus but for everyone." This shift of...