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Silence, by Shusaku Endo

Shusaku Endo’s novel recounts the spiritual descent of an earnest Portuguese priest and his small, beleaguered flock of believers in 17th-century Japan. Ever since I discovered it in 1979 thanks to a review by Douglas John Hall, it has remained among my top three candidates for items I would want to have with me if I were stranded on a desert island. Silence captures the ambiguities and paradoxes of theology of the cross more perceptively than any other piece of Christian writing save for Mark’s Gospel.