Synopses & Reviews
From the award-winning author of The Electrical Field comes this riveting story of love, guilt, and complicity in the context of war. Miyo and her father, Masao, live a reclusive life together in Toronto, as they have since Miyo's mother died in childbirth. When her father dies, Miyo learns that years before he had secretly married and had another child. Driven to discover what else he may have hidden, Miyo travels to Tokyo to meet Hana, her half-sister. She finds herself drawn into Hana's obsession with learning their father's war history-and is shocked to learn that he was a kamikaze pilot. How did he come back alive when only death bestowed honor on a kamikaze? What did he do to survive?
Sakamoto skillfully weaves larger questions of guilt and obligation into an intimate, suspenseful account of a young woman and a country both confronting themselves.
Review
PRAISE FOR THE ELECTRICAL FIELD
"Spooky, atmospheric, unveiling its secrets with uncanny assurance, Kerri Sakamoto's remarkable debut becomes impossible to put down."-Pico Iyer
"Sakamoto is a master of repressed tension. . . . [A] writer to watch."-Chicago Tribune
"Hums with suppressed violence and delicate mysteries."-Los Angeles Times
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"An elegant and thoughtful medititation on history, family, and personality, nicely packed into a tautly mysterious domestic drama."
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"Painstakingly precise…. Sakamoto is masterful in showing us the world through her [heroine's] eyes."
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Required Reading
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New and Notable
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"... deft evocation of Japanese culture and… grave examination of a tragic episode in Japanese history."-
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"This is a strong, rich, and often complicated tale. It's worth the read."
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"Sakamoto's words seem painted rather than typed. Her writing is simple but not simplistic; each image feels painstakingly assembled. "
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"Sakamotos words seem painted rather than typed. Her writing is simple but not simplistic; each image feels painstakingly assembled. " (Minneapolis City Pages)
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"Painstakingly precise…. Sakamoto is masterful in showing us the world through her [heroines] eyes."
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"Sakamoto is a gentle storyteller. She gracefully, but skillfully, paints the story with words as deftly as a Japanese artist."
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New and Notable AsianWeek
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"An elegant and thoughtful meditation on history, family, and personality, Kirkus
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Required Reading New York Post
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PRAISE FOR ONE HUNDRED MILLION HEARTS
"One Hundred Million Hearts paints a portrait of Japanese life-its ancient ways, its minutely observant citizens-that is similar to those in David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars and Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha."-The Vancouver Sun
Synopsis
From the award-winning author of The Electrical Field comes this riveting story of love, guilt, and complicity in the context of war. Miyo and her father, Masao, live a reclusive life in Toronto. When Masao dies, Miyo discovers he harbored a secret life, including a previous wife and child. Miyo travels to Tokyo to meet Hana, her half-sister (who is obsessed with their father's war history) and is shocked to learn he was a member of the Special Attack Forces-a kamikaze. But if these pilots' code of honor required death, how did their father survive? Miyo learns the meaning of the Japanese wartime propaganda phrase "one hundred million hearts beating as one" as she travels through her father's past and his native land's present, witnessing the complex and lingering consequences of war.
About the Author
Kerri Sakamoto is the author of The Electrical Field, which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and was nominated for several others, including the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. She received an M.A. in English from New York University, where she also taught undergraduate creative writing. She lives in Toronto.