Silence and Beauty

Fujimura is an artist, an academic, and a Christian. Born in Japan, he has lived in the United States for most of his adult life. Profoundly moved by Shusaku Endo's 1966 novel Silence about martyred Jesuit missionaries in 17th-century Japan, Fujimura uses both the novel and Endo's life story to frame his personal journey as an artist and a Christian. Listeners who are not familiar with Endo, the novel, or Martin Scorsese's 2016 film version may have a difficult time following this recording. This is the kind of book that merits going back a few pages, making notes, and giving serious thought to the text. That's hard to do with an audiobook. In addition, the recording is inconveniently formatted. Fujimura recommends that readers refer to an appendix for a summary of Silence, but that would require the listener to stop the disc and pop in another. Furthermore, each disc has only three tracks (of approximately 20 minutes each). Stopping in the middle of a track means that the listener has to go back and relisten. Narrator Ova Saopeng's voice is pleasant but does not have much inflection.