When The Emperor Was Divine

'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

A remarkable, beautifully written story of panic, prejudice and shame ... outstandingly accomplished and moving

An intense jewel of a book written with clarity and beauty

Vindicates the suffering of the Japanese in America . . . a blistering first novel

A compelling, powerful portrait of a terrible endurance. Terrific

Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She pursued a career as a painter for several years before turning to fiction writing at age 30. She is the author of When the Emperor Was Divine, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, The Buddha in the Attic, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2012, and The Swimmers. She is a recipient of the Asian American Literary Award, France's Prix Femina Étranger, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She lives in New York City.

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.

The Swimmers

Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 
 
'Exquisite' The New York Times 
 
'A tale of grief and memory awash with dark humour and wit' Spectator 
____________________________________________________ 
 
"Up there," she says, "I'm just another little old lady. But down here, at the pool, I'm myself." 
 
For the people who swim there each day, the local pool is a haven of unexpected kinship and private solace. For Alice, her daily laps have become the ritual that gives her life meaning, even though she may not remember the combination to her locker or where she put her towel. 
 
But one day, a crack appears deep beneath the surface of the water, and then another, and then another. The pool must close for repairs, and with that Alice is plunged into dislocation and chaos. 
 
Away from the steady routines of her swimming, she is engulfed by difficult memories of her own past. And as her sense of home, and of herself, slip further out of her grasp, her daughter must navigate the newly fractured landscape of their relationship. 
 
From the internationally bestselling author of The Buddha in the Attic comes a novel about memory and loss, mothers and daughters, the stories that make up a life, and what happens when they start to unravel. 
______________________________________________ 
 
'I'm in awe of how this beautiful, graceful novel can hold so much grief and loss and love in its pages: a literary gem.' Nicci Gerrard 
 
'An unforgettable novel about mothers and daughters by a spellbinding talent' Daily Mail

Her wisdom is staggeringly beautiful, implicating each of us

Here comes the new Julie Otsuka novel, so we can begin to live again

Colson Whitehead, author of Harlem Shuffle

Heartbreaking and astoundingly good

Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

I'm in awe of how this beautiful, graceful novel can hold so much grief and loss and love in its pages: a literary gem.

Nicci Gerard, author of Soham: A Story Of Our Times

'If it wasn't tragedy it would be comedy, and it nimbly treads the very narrow line between'

'One of the marvels of The Swimmers is its unshowy portrayal of the immense drama inherent in losing the mind before the body has expired. But perhaps even more impressive is its respect for the general confusion of living'

Poignant and funny, I've never read such a brilliant account of this devastating illness, nor for that matter of the compulsive nature of swimming lengths in a pool.

"The Swimmers" is an exquisite companion. Though it doesn't answer the unanswerable, the novel's quiet insistence resonates: that it is our perfectly ordinary proclivities that make us who we are.

An unforgettable novel about mothers and daughters by a spellbinding talent

Stylistically ambitious and deeply moving

A story of memory loss and its fallout for family, and of the power of pool friendship. Glittering and tender.

As a regular and sedate swimmer, I loved this novel...A quiet and thoughtful story about the small, steady joys of life and how quickly and irrevocably they can become disrupted.

A story about mothers and daughters, love and loss, it will make you reconsider what's truly important in life

Haunting, ironic and poetic in its resonance, this slender volume is a must-read...Don't miss this beautifully written, heartfelt, wry and wistful exploration of loss.

With shrewd characterisation and original observations, Otsuka tells a tale of grief and memory that's quietly observed yet awash with dark humour and wit.

Amid an incantatory litany of totalising losses, there are snapshots of a unique life with all its complications. Superbly realised and incredibly moving

Haunting, ironic and poetic in its resonance, this slender volume is a must-read

What makes a good life? What is a good death? The answers to these questions shimmer elusively just below the surface of The Swimmers

Otsuka's slender, stylistically ambitious third novel is a marvel, capturing the hypnotic rhythm of lane-swimming and the devastating decline of memory and connection as dementia takes hold...Heartbreakingly powerful

"Up there," she says, "I'm just another little old lady. But down here, at the pool, I'm myself." 
 
For the people who swim there each day, the local pool is a haven of unexpected kinship and private solace. For Alice, her daily laps have become the ritual that gives her life meaning, even though she may not remember the combination to her locker or where she put her towel. 
 
But one day, a crack appears deep beneath the surface of the water, and then another, and then another. The pool must close for repairs, and with that Alice is plunged into dislocation and chaos. 
 
Away from the steady routines of her swimming, she is engulfed by difficult memories of her own past. And as her sense of home, and of herself, slip further out of her grasp, her daughter must navigate the newly fractured landscape of their relationship.

Julie Otsuka

After the First World War, a group of young women is brought by boat from Japan to San Francisco. They are picture brides, promised the American Dream, clutching photographs of the husbands they have yet to meet, imagining uncertain futures on unknown shores. 
 
Struggling to master a new language and culture, they experience tremulous first nights as new wives, backbreaking work in the fields and in the homes of white women, and, later, the raising of children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history. 
 
And then war arrives once more. 
 
Julie Otsuka tells their extraordinary, heartbreaking story in this spellbinding and poetic account of strangers lost and alone in a new and deeply foreign land.

Julie Otsuka

Books by Julie Otsuka

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter