Silence by Shusaku Endo (1969). Set during the early seventeenth century, when Japanese Christians and the European priests serving them were persecuted and forced to renounce their faith, this novel focuses on a Portuguese priest whose travails force him to ponder “the silence of God . . . the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.”
Total Points: 4 (HaJ 4)