Product Description
The Buddha in the Attic
Author: Julie Otsuka
Format: Paperback
'An understated masterpiece' — San Francisco Chronicle
'Her wisdom is staggeringly beautiful, implicating each of us' — Irish Times
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.
'A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women' — Daily Telegraph
Winner of the Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction 2012
Shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction 2011
Shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2011
About the Author
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.
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