When the Emperor Was Divine

This novel is a little miracle of unsentimental strength. Julie Otsuka re-creates the Japanese internment camps of WWII with the precision of a fine jeweler. Minimal, almost flawless, the story follows an American-Japanese family uprooted from their home "for the sake of national security" and sent to an internment camp in Utah. By leaving the characters nameless, Otsuka connects all who have experienced persecution to this disgraceful episode in America's past. Elaina Erika Davis performs Otsuka's understated prose with delicacy and grace. In each of four points of view, she re-creates "the city of tar-paper barracks" with its barbed-wire fences, making utterly believable the family's disbelief, disorientation, and alienation. As mother, daughter, son, and father reveal their feelings, Davis's voice speaks volumes of innocence betrayed. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 26, 2002
This heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental debut describes in poetic detail the travails of a Japanese family living in an internment camp during World War II, raising the specter of wartime injustice in bone-chilling fashion. After a woman whose husband was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy sees notices posted around her neighborhood in Berkeley instructing Japanese residents to evacuate, she moves with her son and daughter to an internment camp, abruptly severing her ties with her community. The next three years are spent in filthy, cramped and impersonal lodgings as the family is shuttled from one camp to another. They return to Berkeley after the war to a home that has been ravaged by vandals; it takes time for them to adjust to life outside the camps and to come to terms with the hostility they face. When the children's father re-enters the book, he is more of a symbol than a character, reduced to a husk by interrogation and abuse. The novel never strays into melodrama—Otsuka describes the family's everyday life in Berkeley and the pitiful objects that define their world in the camp with admirable restraint and modesty. Events are viewed from numerous characters' points of view, and the different perspectives are defined by distinctive, lyrically simple observations. The novel's honesty and matter-of-fact tone in the face of inconceivable injustice are the source of its power. Anger only comes to the fore during the last segment, when the father is allowed to tell his story—but even here, Otsuka keeps rage neatly bound up, luminous beneath the dazzling surface of her novel. (Sept.)Forecast:Reader interest in the Japanese-American experience was proved by the success of
Snow Falling on Cedars . Otsuka's pared-down narrative may have a more limited appeal, but can safely be recommended to Guterson fans. Five-city author tour.