Sunday, February 15, 2009

A Little Help Requested from My Minions

I'm working on the research for my Church History report in about a month. I have permission from my professor to study the use of fiction and story by Christian authors to create change in the culture around them and point people toward Christ.

The catch, of course, being that I can't use European or Western authors. Which removes large chunks of the more familiar Christian literature (which is, I am sure, precisely the point).

Here's what I'm working on so far:

I'm going to read
Silence by the famous Japanese Catholic author, Shusaku Endo.

I'll also read Things Fall Apart: A Novel by Chinua Achebe, the "father of modern African writing."

As well as At the Master's Feet by Sadhu Sundar Singh, the famous Indian mystic who converted to Christianity after seeing a vision of Christ. I'll be paying special attention to his parables, and in fact you can read a book that has some samples of his work in Wisdom of the Sadhu, which is available as a pdf for free online. I think you'll find it interesting.

HERE'S THE PROBLEM and why I need your help... as you may have noticed, all three of these authors are from the 20th century. I've been working on finding some pre-20th century, non-western, Christian authors who use fiction, story or narrative in their work. I am certain some of you out there can help, so I am planning to use you as a sort of Monstrous Hive Mind to give me some direction. So leave a comment if you've got a thought... thanks!

4 comments:

  1. You may get a few more leads here:

    http://www.library.yale.edu/div/MissionariesinFiction.htm

    A compilation of world-wide fiction that have missionary characters in them. I'm seeing quite a few non-western authors, but I think that for sure the "novel" as we know it hadn't caught on in non-western cultures till the 20th century, so you're going to be looking for transcribed oral tradition...pretty tough assignment.

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  2. Ah, I forgot: check out the graphic novel, American Born Chinese. It's awesome. Gave away seven copies for Christmas.

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  3. Matt, How about Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov? I highly recommend it and it has major spiritual themes in it.

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  4. BTW, wasn't Duncan's Brother's K awesome?

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