When The Emperor Was Divine

Unabridged
Author: Julie Otsuka
Narrator: Elaina Erika Davis
Genres: Fiction
Publisher: Random House (Audio)
Date: October 2003
Length: 3 hours, 30 minutes
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Overview

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.

Selected Reviews

When the Emperor Was Diving

by Anonymous
  • Book Rating: 4/5

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Reviews (1)

When the Emperor Was Diving

Written by Anonymous on March 13th, 2006

  • Book Rating: 4/5

This was a very interesting and thought provoking story of a Japanese-American family before, during, and after WWII. It picks up right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and follows the family's evacuation to an internment camp in the middle of the Utah desert. This books presents the family's bewilderment as they go from being part of a neighborhood community to being shunned as outsiders as their father is hauled off in the middle of the night. The book is told from each family member's point of view as they struggle with the loss of their father, their depression, their loss of community stature, ecomomic status, and their home. Even though the book is serious, the author treats the subject with a warm and human touch - not forgetting the little day to day activites that still go on in the face of injustice and treatment.

Selected Reviews

When the Emperor Was Diving

by Anonymous
  • Book Rating: 4/5

More...

Read All 1