About this item
Julie Otsuka's commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination - both physical and emotional - of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each flawlessly executed from a different point of view - the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train ride to the camp; the son in the desert encampment; the family's return to their home; and the bitter release of the father after more than four years in captivity - she has created a small tour de force, a novel of unrelenting economy and suppressed emotion. Spare, intimate, arrestingly understated, When the Emperor Was Divine is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and an unmistakably resonant lesson for our times. It heralds the arrival of a singularly gifted new novelist.
About the Author
Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. After studying art as an undergraduate at Yale University she pursued a career as a painter for several years before turning to fiction writing at age 30. She received her MFA from Columbia. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Asian American Literary Award, and the American Library Association Alex Award. Her first novel, , is about the internment of a Japanese-American family during World War II. It was a Notable Book, a Best Book of the Year, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers finalist. The book is based on Otsuka's own family history: her grandfather was arrested by the FBI as a suspected spy for Japan the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and her mother, uncle and grandmother spent three years in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah. has been translated into six languages and sold more than 250,000 copies. called it "a resonant and beautifully nuanced achievement" and described it as "A gem of a book and one of the most vivid history lessons you'll ever learn. " It has been assigned to all incoming freshmen at more than 35 colleges and universities and is a regular 'Community Reads' selection across the US. Her second novel, , is about a group of young Japanese 'picture brides' who sailed to America in the early 1900s to become the wives of men they had never met and knew only by their photographs. It has been nominated for the 2011 National Book Award.
