John Zeugner

Soldier for Christ: a Novel John Zeugner

Rector's assistant Owen Mathias, a young and average sensualist, gradually stumbles on the considerable connections his church in Kobe, Japan, has to atrocities committed by Unit 731, Japan's biological warfare research center in Harbin, Manchuria, during World War II. Mathias's discoveries toss him into theodicy's deepest pit, savaging his faith and pinballing him among the vapid convictions of his rector, the pieties of ex-pat parishioners, the bitter doubts of an American missionary couple, the placid sexuality of his Japanese girlfriend, and the fey manipulations of Japanese witnesses trying to reveal and contain and explain the story. The Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe in 1995 underscores the theological writhings Mathias undergoes and his emergence as an ambivalent and comic soldier for Christ.

"Zeugner's perceptions about the Japanese are always startling. . . . His keen observations of Japan's historical, intellectual, and physical landscape make for an absorbing story of Japan's horrific war crime in China."
--Caroline Matano Yang, Former Executive Director, Japan Fulbright Program

"Soldier for Christ is an extraordinary novel that refracts our perception of the timeless and universal questions of faith, sin, expiation, and redemption through the prism of two diametrically opposed cultures. Zeugner's pitch-perfect description of postwar Japan and its complex mixture of native culture and Westernization is the perfect medium to describe one pastor's attempt to understand whether some acts are so heinous as to be unredeemable."
--Bruce Stronach, Dean, Temple University, Japan Campus

"Zeugner is as provocative as ever. His insight into the historic-cultural problems of Japan is an exemplary instance of the case that the outsider sees the best of the game."
--Yasunari Takada, Professor of Transcultural Studies, University of Tokyo

John Zeugner, Emeritus Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, has published short stories in literary magazines. A recipient of a Discovery Grant for fiction from the National Endowment for the Arts, he has over the course of three decades taught American Studies in Japan--at Osaka and Kobe Universities, Keio University, and Kobe Women's College.