'A compelling, powerful portrait of a terrible endurance. Terrific' The Times
Four months after Pearl Harbor, signs begin appearing up and down the West Coast instructing all persons of Japanese ancestry to report to 'assembly centers'. For one family - reclassified, virtually overnight, as unwelcome enemies - it is the beginning of a nightmare of oppression and alienation that will alter their lives forever.
There is the mother, reeling from the order to 'evacuate', and the daughter, travelling on the long train journey away from freedom. There is the son, who struggles to adapt to their new life in the dust of the Utah desert, and the father, who, after four bitter years in captivity, returns to his family a stranger.
Based on a true story, Julie Otsuka's powerful, deeply humane first novel tells of a forgotten generation who found themselves imprisoned in their own country, and evokes an unjustly overlooked episode in America's wartime history.
'Outstandingly accomplished and moving' Sunday Telegraph
'Exceptional' New Yorker
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE
WINNER OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN LITERARY AWARD 2003
WINNER OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ALEX AWARD 2003
Autorentext
Julie Otsuka
Zusammenfassung
Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction
It is four months after Pearl Harbour and overnight signs appear all over the United States instructing Japanese Americans to report to internment camps for the duration of the war. For one family it proves to be a nightmare of oppression and alienation. Explored from varying points of view - the mother receiving the order to evacuate; the daughter on the long train journey; the son in the desert encampment; the family's return home; and the bitter release of their father after four years in captivity - it tells of an incarceration that will alter their lives for ever.
Based on a true story, Julie Otsuka's powerful, deeply humane novel tells of an unjustly forgotten episode in America's wartime history.