description: 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.
language: English
title: When the Emperor Was Divine
titlecomplete: When the Emperor Was Divine
genres: Fiction, Historical, War, Asia, Japan, School, Adult, Adult Fiction, Historical Fiction, World War II
ratings_count: 25490
places: California, Utah
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction Longlist, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: ALA Alex Award, awardedAt: 1641024000000
name: Phoenix Award (Children's Literature Association)
publisher: Random House Audio