A precise, understated gem of a first novel, Julie Otsuka's When the Emperor Was Divine tells one Japanese American family's story of internment in a Utah enemy alien camp during World War II. We never learn the names of the young boy and girl who were forced to leave their Berkeley home in 1942 and spend over three years in a dusty, barren desert camp with their mother. Occasional, heavily censored letters arrive from their father, who had been taken from their house in his slippers by the FBI one night and was being held in New Mexico, his fate uncertain. But even after the war, when they have been reunited and are putting their stripped, vandalized house back together, the family can never regain its pre-war happiness. Broken by circumstance and prejudice, they will continue to pay, in large and small ways, for the shape of their eyes. When the Emperor Was Divine is written in deceptively tranquil prose, a distillation of injustice, anger, and poetry; a notable debut. --Regina Marler


From Publishers Weekly
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.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Otsuka researched historical sources and her own grandparents' experiences as background for this spare yet poignant first novel about the ordeal of a Japanese family sent to an internment camp during World War II. Its perspective shifts among different family members as the story unfolds. We see the mother numbly pack up the family's middle-class belongings to leave behind in their Berkeley home. The dehumanizing train trip to the camp, and the bleak internment in the alkaline Nevada desert, as related by the young son and daughter, become mythic events. Their father, picked up for questioning immediately after Pearl Harbor and imprisoned throughout the war, returns a broken and bitter man. The family's humiliation continues beyond the war's end: after returning to their vandalized home, they are shunned for months by former friends and neighbors. The novel's themes of freedom and banishment are especially important as we see civil liberties threatened during the current war on terrorism. Otsuka's clear, elegant prose makes these themes accessible to a range of reading levels from young adult on. Highly recommended for all libraries.Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Libs., Harrisonburg, VACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
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 © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
A woman sees the sign on a bright day in Berkeley, California, in 1942. Otsuka, who demonstrates a breathtaking restraint and delicacy throughout this supple and devastating first novel, does not explain what the sign says, or immediately reveal the woman's Japanese heritage. The woman has a smart and nervy daughter, and a bright and imaginative son. The man of the house, a successful businessman, has already been taken away. And so Otsuka launches her exquisite psychological tale, inspired by her own family's travails, of the internment of tens of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II. By illuminating the minds of each of her magnetic, wryly humorous characters, and by focusing on such details as the torment of having to abandon pets, the emblematic loss of an earring, the magical sight of wild mustangs out a train window at night, and the harsh Utah desert in which these gentle souls are forced to live in grim exile for more than three years, Otsuka universalizes their experience of prejudice and disenfranchisement, creating a veritable poetics of stoicism. (For another evocative approach to the subject, see Marnie Mueller's Climate of the Country [1999]). Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“Exceptional. . . . Otsuka skillfully dramatizes a world suddenly foreign. . . . [Her] incantatory, unsentimental prose is the book’s greatest strength.” –The New Yorker

“Spare, incisive. . . . The mood of the novel tensely reflects the protagonists’ emotional state: calm surfaces above, turmoil just beneath.” –Boston Globe

“A timely examination of mass hysteria in troubled times. . . . Otsuka combines interesting facts and tragic emotions with a steady, pragmatic hand.”–The Oregonian

“Prose so cool and precise that it’s impossible not to believe what [Otsuka] tells us or to see clearly what she wants us to see. . . . A gem of a book and one of the most vivid history lessons you’ll ever learn.” –USA Today

“With a matter-of-fact brilliance, and a poise as prominent in the protagonist as it is in the writing, When the Emperor Was Divine is a novel about loyalty, about identity, and about being other in America during uncertain times.” –Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

“Shockingly brilliant. . . . it will make you gasp . . . Undoubtedly one of the most effective, memorable books to deal with the internment crisis . . . The maturity of Otsuka’s. . . prose is astonishing.” — The Bloomsbury Review

“The novel’s voice is as hushed as a whisper. . . . An exquisite debut. . . potent, spare, crystalline.” –O, The Oprah Magazine

“At once delicately poetic and unstintingly unsentimental.”

“Heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental. . . .rais[es] the specter of wartime injustice in bone-chilling fashion. . . . The novel’s honesty and matter-of-fact tone in the face of inconceivable injustice are the source of its power. . . . Dazzling.” –Publishers Weekly

“Otsuka . . . demonstrates a breathtaking restraint and delicacy throughout this supple and devastating first novel .” –Booklist

“Spare yet poignant. . . . clear, elegant prose.” –Library Journal

“Her voice never falters, equally adept at capturing horrific necessity and accidental beauty. Her unsung prisoners of war contend with multiple front lines, and enemies who wear the faces of neighbors and friends. It only takes a few pages to join their cause, but by the time you finish this exceptional debut, you will recognize that their struggle has always been yours.” –Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days

“Heartbreaking. . . . A crystalline account.” –The Seattle Post-Intelligencer


Review
?Exceptional. . . . Otsuka skillfully dramatizes a world suddenly foreign. . . . [Her] incantatory, unsentimental prose is the book?s greatest strength.? ?The New Yorker

?Spare, incisive. . . . The mood of the novel tensely reflects the protagonists? emotional state: calm surfaces above, turmoil just beneath.? ?Boston Globe

?A timely examination of mass hysteria in troubled times. . . . Otsuka combines interesting facts and tragic emotions with a steady, pragmatic hand.??The Oregonian

?Prose so cool and precise that it?s impossible not to believe what [Otsuka] tells us or to see clearly what she wants us to see. . . . A gem of a book and one of the most vivid history lessons you?ll ever learn.? ?USA Today

?With a matter-of-fact brilliance, and a poise as prominent in the protagonist as it is in the writing, When the Emperor Was Divine is a novel about loyalty, about identity, and about being other in America during uncertain times.? ?Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

?Shockingly brilliant. . . . it will make you gasp . . . Undoubtedly one of the most effective, memorable books to deal with the internment crisis . . . The maturity of Otsuka?s. . . prose is astonishing.? ? The Bloomsbury Review

?The novel?s voice is as hushed as a whisper. . . . An exquisite debut. . . potent, spare, crystalline.? ?O, The Oprah Magazine

?At once delicately poetic and unstintingly unsentimental.?

?Heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental. . . .rais[es] the specter of wartime injustice in bone-chilling fashion. . . . The novel?s honesty and matter-of-fact tone in the face of inconceivable injustice are the source of its power. . . . Dazzling.? ?Publishers Weekly

?Otsuka . . . demonstrates a breathtaking restraint and delicacy throughout this supple and devastating first novel .? ?Booklist

?Spare yet poignant. . . . clear, elegant prose.? ?Library Journal

?Her voice never falters, equally adept at capturing horrific necessity and accidental beauty. Her unsung prisoners of war contend with multiple front lines, and enemies who wear the faces of neighbors and friends. It only takes a few pages to join their cause, but by the time you finish this exceptional debut, you will recognize that their struggle has always been yours.? ?Colson Whitehead, author of John Henry Days

?Heartbreaking. . . . A crystalline account.? ?The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
Understated but powerful and particularly resonant today, When the Emperor Was Divine is a heartbreaking first novel, the story of a Japanese-American family all but destroyed by American prejudice and policies during World War II.

The story unfolds in the third person as four family members move through the different phases of their internment. Otsuka's language is spare, and her images are intense. The mother dispenses with the remnants of the family's life in California when they are forced out of their home. The boy recalls his father's arrest -- how he was led out of the house in a bathrobe and slippers. On a train headed for the Nevada desert, the children reflect on how their lives have changed, with their comfortable home giving way to whitewashed horse stalls, and finally to a dusty wasteland in the middle of nowhere.

Their father imprisoned in far away New Mexico, the children and their mother eke out a new existence in the "blinding white glare" of the treeless desert internment camp. Assigned to a single room in a tar-paper barracks with three iron cots, they live through brutally hot summers and bitterly cold winters as their once happy and promising lives waste away, and as they wait, patiently, for the war to end. Fall 2002 Selection

ANNOTATION

Second-place winner, 2002 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, Fiction.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

Author Biography: Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She is a graduate of Yale University and received her M.F.A. from Columbia. She lives in New York City.

SYNOPSIS

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New Yorker

This exceptional first novel is about a Japanese family in Berkeley, California, during the Second World War. After the father is arrested for treason, the mother, daughter, and son are sent to an internment camp, where the girl tells her brother bedtime stories about the desert beyond the barbed-wire fence, and the boy whispers the forbidden name of the Japanese emperor when he thinks no one is listening. Otsuka skillfully dramatizes a world suddenly foreign, from the "No Japs Allowed" sign at the movie theatre to the horse meat served at dinner in the camp. The implicit questions about culpability resonate with particular power right now, but Otsuka's incantatory, unsentimental prose is the book's greatest strength. It turns our ideas of beauty on their head, as when the boy uneasily remembers a treasured glimpse of the horses he now eats: "They had long black tails and dark flowing manes and he had watched them galloping in the moonlight across the flat dusty plain and then for three nights in a row he had dreamed of them."

Publishers Weekly

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. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

VOYA

Their middle-class, close-knit Japanese American family could have been any of the thousands uprooted from their homes in the Pacific coast and sent to internment camps in distant states during World War II "for the sake of national security" and "for their own protection." Otsuka eloquently chronicles in five chapters, one from each family member, their reactions as they are removed from their friendly neighborhoods and thrust into a strange new world where they are now the enemy. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the father, still in bathrobe and slippers, is taken away by the FBI for questioning and is not allowed to return home. Later, the mother, her eleven-year-old daughter, and her eight-year-old son are told to prepare to leave, taking with them only what they can carry. Resettled in a Utah camp, they begin to receive heavily censored letters from the father, who is now detained in New Mexico. When the war ends, they are sent home, impoverished and viewed with suspicion by their old neighbors. Resilient and resolute, the mother begins to earn a living as a maid, coping with her physically weakened, spiritually crushed husband. The family is nameless, adding to the feelings of unreality and alienation. With precise detail, succinct but sensitive prose, and great emotional restraint, Otsuka's enlightening, deeply stirring, Alex Award-winning book will affect all readers. A recent nonfiction book on this subject is Japanese American Internment During World War II by Wendy Ng (Greenwood, 2002/VOYA February 2003). VOYA Codes: 4Q 2P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Junior High,defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2002, Random House, 144p

Alan Review - Ted Hipple

A compelling and heartbreaking story, this book is about the tragedy of Japanese Americans interned during WW II and, by understated implication, it is a powerful indictment of the kind of racism still practiced in this country, now more commonly directed at Middle Easterners. First, the father is taken for "routine questioning," not to be seen by his family for over four years. A few months later, mother, teen daughter, and ten-year-old son are sent to a fenced and guarded desert camp for three and half years. Haunting, evocative, brilliantly written, with multiple points of view￯﾿ﾽmother, daughter, son, daughter and son ("we"), and finally, father, none of whom is given a name￯﾿ﾽthis novel merits significant attention. Note: some young readers may benefit from teacher or Web explanations of the internment camps of WW II, and the treatment of Japanese Americans before, during, and especially, after their imprisonment. 2002, Knopf, 144 pp.,

KLIATT - Courtney Lewis