The Buddha in the Attic

The long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine tells of young Japanese women brought to San Francisco as mail-order brides.

Shortlisted for the 2011 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2011 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and winner of the Pen Faulkner Award for Fiction 2012, Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic , the long awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine tells of young Japanese women brought to San Francisco as mail-order brides. Between the first and second world wars a group of young, non-English-speaking Japanese women travelled by boat to America. They were picture brides, clutching photos of husbands-to-be whom they had yet to meet. 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.

Autorenportrait:
Julie Otsuka, geboren 1962 in Kalifornien, lebt heute in New York City. Sie war Guggenheim-Stipendiatin und wurde mit verschiedenen Preisen ausgezeichnet.Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She is a recipient of the Asian American Literary Award , the American Library Association Alex Award , and a Guggenheim fellowship. Julie Otsuka lives in New York City.

Rezension:
Sweeping, symphonic, empathic ... subtle, infinitely skilful ... an exhilarating, compulsive read. Otsuka's haunting, heartbreaking conclusion, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, is faultless. (Daily Mail) A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women ... the distaff equivalent of a war memorial. (Daily Telegraph) A haunting and heartbreaking look at the immigrant experience ... Otsuka's keenly observed prose manages to capture whole histories in a sweep of gorgeous incantatory sentences' Marie Claire 'An understated masterpiece ... she conjures up the lost voices of a generation of Japanese American women without losing sight of the distinct experience of each. (San Francisco Chronicle)