Aghwee the Sky Monster
Aghwee The Sky Monster (空の怪物アグイー, Sora no kaibutsu Aguii) is a 1964 short story/novel by the Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe. It has been translated into English by John Nathan and published in the volume Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, along with the title story, Prize Stock and The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away. Aghwee was one of the first in Ōe's series of stories inspired by the birth of his autistic son Hikari. Plot Aghwee opens with the anonymous narrator, a 28-year-old man, talking about the near-blindness in one of his eyes, the result of an attack by a group of children that year. Because of his blurred vision he sees "two worlds superimposed". The attack had prompted him to remember the events of the story, which took place ten years earlier, and the memory freed him from hatred of his assailants. The narrator had worked as a companion to a composer, D, then aged 28, who had (apparently) gone mad after the death of his infant son. D says that when he goes outside, he is visited by the spirit of his son, who swoops down out of the sky: "a fat baby in a