The first novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe, first published in 1958, tells the story of a group of children and adolescents who are evacuated from a reform school to an isolated mountain village towards the end of the war. Influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Norman Mailer, the author addresses central themes of his work in this early text: violence, sexuality, and the conflict between the individual and freedom on one hand, and society and coercion on the other.