The Sea and Poison

On the first day of First Surgery’s project, three prisoners were scheduled for operations. The aims of the vivisection experiment were described as follows:

1. Saline is to be injected into the blood stream. The quantitative limits of such a procedure before death occurs are to be ascertained.

2. Air is to be injected into the veins and the volume at which death occurs is to be ascertained.

3. The limit to which the bronchial tubes may be cut before death occurs is to be ascertained.

From the author of Silence, soon to be a major film by Martin Scorsese starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver, The Sea and Poison is Shusaku Endo’s most disquieting novel and a masterful study of individual and collective moral disintegration. Set in a Japanese hospital during the last days of the Second World War, the story centres on the medical staff who offer to assist in a series of vivisections, live experimental operations, on US prisoners of war.