Wonderful Fool
Translated by Francis Mathy
About
Gaston Bonaparte — a large, clumsy, trusting Frenchman who may or may not be descended from Napoleon — arrives in Tokyo and proceeds to change the lives of everyone he meets, simply by being kind. His Japanese hosts are bewildered. The gangsters he encounters are disarmed. The city that should swallow him whole finds itself rearranged by his stubborn, foolish goodness. Shusaku Endo's comic novel asks a question he spent his career circling: what happens when genuine innocence meets a sophisticated society that has no use for it? The answer is funnier and more moving than you'd expect. A novel about the disruptive power of being too good for the world you're in — and about a country that doesn't know what to do with a holy fool.
