Overview

Julie Otsuka tells the extraordinary, heartbreaking story of young Japanese women brought to San Francisco as mail-order brides in the 1940s 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.

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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 Paints a poignant, moving portrait of immigration by deftly weaving together a chorus of voices. Fascinating and tragic in equal measure Easy Living A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women 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 Novels written in the first person plural are rare. It's a narrative device that gives The Buddha in the Attic a deliciously melancholy quality ... Powerful, lyrical and almost unbearably sad Psychologies Powerfully moving ... intensely lyrical ... verges on the edge of poetry Independent The tone is often incantatory, and though the language is direct, unconvoluted, almost without metaphor, its true and very unusual merit lies, I think, in that indefinable quality we call poetry -- Ursula Le Guin Guardian A kind of collective memoir that squeezes volumes of experience into a small space ... more than a history lesson because Otsuka compresses the individual emotions into one haunting story The Times Her trick is to sum up a few life story in a few tantalising sentences, moving on to the next at lightning speed. The result is panoramic, each line opening a window on to the world of one woman after another, pinpointing each one's hopes and happiness or misery and pain Sunday Express Intriguing ... fleeting, singular images pile up and reverberate against each other to strange, memorable effect Metro Spare but resonant, powerful, evocative The New York Times Book Review Spare and stunning ... Otsuka has created a tableau as intricate as the pen strokes her humble immigrant girls learned to use in letters to loved ones they'd never see again Oprah Magazine A delicate, heartbreaking portrait ... beautifully rendered ... Otsuka's prose is precise and rich with imagery. [Readers] will finish this exceptional book profoundly moved. Publishers Weekly This chorus of narrators speaks in a poetry that is both spare and passionate, sure to haunt even the most coldhearted among us Chicago Tribune A stunning feat of empathetic imagination and emotional compression, capturing the experience of thousands of women Vogue A lithe stunner Elle To watch Emperor catching on with teachers and students in vast numbers is to grasp what must have happened at the outset for novels like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird The New York Times on When the Emperor was Divine

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 Paints a poignant, moving portrait of immigration by deftly weaving together a chorus of voices. Fascinating and tragic in equal measure Easy Living A tender, nuanced, empathetic exploration of the sorrows and consolations of a whole generation of women 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 Novels written in the first person plural are rare. It's a narrative device that gives The Buddha in the Attic a deliciously melancholy quality ... Powerful, lyrical and almost unbearably sad Psychologies Powerfully moving ... intensely lyrical ... verges on the edge of poetry Independent The tone is often incantatory, and though the language is direct, unconvoluted, almost without metaphor, its true and very unusual merit lies, I think, in that indefinable quality we call poetry -- Ursula Le Guin Guardian A kind of collective memoir that squeezes volumes of experience into a small space ... more than a history lesson because Otsuka compresses the individual emotions into one haunting story The Times Her trick is to sum up a few life story in a few tantalising sentences, moving on to the next at lightning speed. The result is panoramic, each line opening a window on to the world of one woman after another, pinpointing each one's hopes and happiness or misery and pain Sunday Express Intriguing ... fleeting, singular images pile up and reverberate against each other to strange, memorable effect Metro Spare but resonant, powerful, evocative The New York Times Book Review Spare and stunning ... Otsuka has created a tableau as intricate as the pen strokes her humble immigrant girls learned to use in letters to loved ones they'd never see again Oprah Magazine A delicate, heartbreaking portrait ... beautifully rendered ... Otsuka's prose is precise and rich with imagery. [Readers] will finish this exceptional book profoundly moved. Publishers Weekly 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... The Buddha in the Attic seems destined to endure San Francisco Chronicle This chorus of narrators speaks in a poetry that is both spare and passionate, sure to haunt even the most coldhearted among us Chicago Tribune A stunning feat of empathetic imagination and emotional compression, capturing the experience of thousands of women Vogue A lithe stunner Elle To watch Emperor catching on with teachers and students in vast numbers is to grasp what must have happened at the outset for novels like Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird The New York Times on When the Emperor was Divine Already highly acclaimed in the US, it's a short novel, written with brutality and beauty. The Buddha in the Attic has the rare strength and poignancy that comes from telling an untold story Word

Author Information

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 tranger, 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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