Kenzaburō Ōe, the winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, is internationally acclaimed as one of the most important and influential post-World War II writers, known for his powerful accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and his own struggle to come to terms with a mentally handicapped son. The Swedish Academy lauded Ōe for his  "poetic force [that] creates an imagined world where life and myth  condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament  today." His most popular book, A Personal Matter, is the story of Bird, a frustrated intellectual in a failing marriage whose Utopian dream is shattered when his wife gives birth to a brain-damaged child. "“In writing novels there is no substitute for maturity and moral awareness. Kenzaburō Ōe has both.”— Alan Levensohn, Christian Science Monitor