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From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and The Swimmers, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times.
On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family’s possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert.
In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today’s headlines.
From the Publisher
Publisher : Anchor (October 14, 2003)
Language : English
Paperback : 160 pages
ISBN-10 : 0385721811
ISBN-13 : 978-0385721813
Lexile measure : 810L
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 5.18 x 0.45 x 7.97 inches
Customers say
Customers find the characters beautifully formed and compassionate. They also describe the writing style as beautiful, direct, and clean. Readers describe the content as interesting, moving, and inviting reflection. They appreciate the stark narratives that provide intense poignancy and nuanced book about Japanese internment. Opinions are mixed on the length, with some finding it short and highly informative, while others say it’s too short.
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