The Moor’s Account

Laila Lalami, 2014

(March 2017)

  

A tale of imperial hubris gone awry, as it inevitably will. Reminds me in many ways of Dan Simmons’s The Terror, if that book had been written without the supernatural elements.

United States of Japan

& The Man in the High Castle
Peter Tieryas, 2016

Philip K. Dick, 1962

(August 2016)

The first time I read The Man in the High Castle was way back, before I ever imagined I might end up living in Japan. Reading it a second time, it became apparent that there was a hell of a lot I missed, in terms of both the Japan-related stuff and just as a side-effect of being younger and dumber. The plan, however, was merely to refresh my memory before moving on to United States of Japan, which is something of a tribute/homage/reimagining of Dick’s seminal work. I wasn’t really going to talk much about the latter, except to the degree it informs USJ.

When the Emperor Was Divine

Julie Otsuka, 2002

(August 2015)

  

You’ll recall that I was blown away by The Buddha in the Attic, which you could say acts as something of a prequel to this. Emperor isn’t quite up to those rarified standards, but is still a very good book, dealing with the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and so reading this during early August just added to the normal merry-go-round of opinion and counter-opinion regarding the end of the Pacific war. Once again, I'm quite glad I’ve got the excuse of these bite-sized holiday round-up posts to let me avoid expanding on that, to be honest.

The Buddha in the Attic

Julie Otsuka, 2011

(July 2014)

  

Another one of those books that leaves me unable to do anything other than gibber fractured and entirely inadequate praise. This is an astonishing work. I never thought I could be made to feel so emotionally rent by what amounts to one hundred and thirty pages of lists.

…and a Weeding

2.    Achievement Unlocked

Americans, they know how to do a revolution properly. Well, almost. Even theirs wouldn’t have taken without considerable help from the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys (how soon we forget). Still, given the choice between national origin myths – the British desire for secret privilege granted by right of birth and the American kicking against authority and repression – and I know which I would choose.