When The Emperor was Divine: Summary and book reviews of When The Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka, plus links to an excerpt from When The Emperor was Divine and a biography of Julie Otsuka.

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.

Media Reviews

New York Times - Michiko Kakutanih Crystalline.... precise but poetic.... resonant and beautifully nuanced.   Kirkus Reviews ... the narrative remains stubbornly at the surface, almost like an informational flow, causing the reader duly to acknowledge these many wrongs done to this unjustly uprooted and now appallingly deprived American family-but never finding a way to go deeper, to a place where the attention will be held rigid and the heart seized.   Library Journal - Reba Leiding The novel's themes of freedom and banishment are especially important as we see civil liberties threatened during the current war on terrorism. Otsuka's clear, elegant prose makes these themes accessible to a range of reading levels from young adult on. Highly recommended for all libraries.   Publishers Weekly This heartbreaking, bracingly unsentimental debut describes in poetic detail the travails of a Japanese family living in an internment camp during World War II, raising the specter of wartime injustice in bone-chilling fashion.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Louise J
When the Emperor Was Divine
Overnight signs appeared on trees, billboards, bus stop benches, and store windows in Berkeley, California, in 1942 ordering Japanese Americans to a dusty internment camp in the Utah desert. They had been “reclassified” as enemy aliens. This...   Read More

Rated of 5 by D-Jack
ehh?
This book was a very informative read, but at points, its plot seemed to drift (from exciting to dull). There is a lot of symbolism in the story, and parts grab your attention. I found myself eager to turn the pages at points, just to see if the...   Read More

Rated of 5 by m.yang
aww, this book was absoloutly stunning! it was a great book from the mother's epic journey to kill her pets and help her children learn of what obstacles their family had to face in the near future. with the son, who was young curious and in need...   Read More

Rated of 5 by CathyM
Julia Otsuka does a wonderful job of describing this very difficult time in American history. The book was easily read and held my attention, in fact so much that I had a hard time putting it down. I felt the degradation, discrimination and the...   Read More

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Books with similar themes

• Novels
  
• USA 
  
• West 
  
• Ariz. Nev. N.M. Utah 
  
• 1940s & '50s 
  
• 1st Books/1st Novels 
  
• Asian Writers/Themes 
  
• In Time of War & The Effects of War 
  
• Controversial Subjects