Somersault

(In his first new novel since he won the Novel Prize, Oe makes an immense departure from the autobiographical fiction he is most known for, in a magnificent story of the charisma of leaders and the danger of zealotry. A decade before the story opens, two men referred to as the Patron and Guide of manking were leaders of an influential religious movement. When a radical faction of their teaching and abandoned their followers. After ten years of silence, two men referred to as the Patron and Guide of mankind begin contacting their old followers and reaching out to the public. As Patron and a core of the faithful attempt to incorporate followers from the movement's past into a new vision for its future, conflicting agendas threaten the church's unity--or something far more dangerous. Ambitious and beautifully told, Somesault illuminates the spiritual searching of modern man that makes religious cults so compelling.)