Julie Otsuka\'s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen.
From the Hardcover edition..
It heralds the arrival of a singularly gifted new novelist.
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.
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.
With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family to evoke the deracination--both physical and emotional--of a generation of Japanese Americans.
Julie Otsuka\'s commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen
