ABOUT
THE BOOK

When the Emperor was Divine paints a portrait of the Japanese internment camps unlike any we have ever seen. With crystalline intensity and precision, Otsuka uses a single family tree to evoke the deracination – both physical and emotional – of a generation of Japanese Americans. In five chapters, each 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. It is a haunting evocation of a family in wartime.