When The Emperor Was Divine

Julie Otsuka

From Shelf: The 2003 Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist

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, this book tells of an incarceration that can alter their lives for ever..

'A compelling, powerful portrait of a terrible endurance. Terrific' The TimesFour 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 YorkerLONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZEWINNER OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN LITERARY AWARD 2003WINNER OF THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION ALEX AWARD 2003