| When the Emperor Was Divine Contributor(s): Otsuka, Julie (Author) |
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ISBN: 0385721811 ISBN-13: 9780385721813 Publisher: Anchor Books OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2003 Annotation: 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. "From the Hardcover edition. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Historical - General - Fiction | War & Military - Fiction | Cultural Heritage |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Lexile Measure: 810 |
| Physical Information: 0.5" H x 5.1" W x 7.9" (0.35 lbs) 160 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1940's - Cultural Region - Western U.S. - Cultural Region - West Coast - Ethnic Orientation - Japanese - Geographic Orientation - California |
| Accelerated Reader Info |
| Quiz #: 68644 Reading Level: 5.0 Interest Level: Upper Grades Point Value: 5.0 |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese internment 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 internment 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. |