The Changeling (Japanese: 取り替え子 (チェンジリング), romanized: Torikaeko (Chenjiringu)) is a 2000 novel by Kenzaburō Ōe.
[1] In the novel, a filmmaker named Goro Hanawa commits suicide, although he had appeared to be happy.
His best friend, a novelist named Kogito Choko who is also his brother-in-law, discovers the suicide via one of 40 audiotapes that Goro recorded and sent to him.
Kogito listens to the tapes and, in the words of Scott Espositom reviewing the novel in the Los Angeles Times, "What he finds is a rambling series of discourses on everything from the friendship they've shared since they were teens in the 1950s to Goro's ideas about art and life, their shared admiration for Rimbaud and a few secrets from the past.
"[2] Scott Esposito wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the book "offers evidence that the Japanese master has regained his footing".