has renounced his faith. Once faced with the realities of religious persecution Rodrigues himself is forced to make an impossible choice: whether to abandon his flock or his God. Winner of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, Silence is Shusaku Endo's most highly acclaimed novel and a classic of its genre. It caused major controversy in Japan following its publication in 1967. Silence is now a major film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver. Shusaku Endo is widely regarded as one of the greatest Japanese authors of the late 20th century. Born in 1923, he won many major literary awards and was nominated for the Nobel Prize several times. His novels have been translated into 28 languages.