First published 2006
Katie Kitamura sits on a speeding train bound for Osaka to see her parents. The rushing landscape triggers memories from her childhood and thoughts about the devastating years following Hiroshima's bombing. She watches Japan blur past her window and wrestles with contradictions everywhere she looks. The country pulses with vibrant pop culture while carrying unspoken trauma from its past. As a Japanese-American, Katie exists in a strange middle space. She belongs here and doesn't belong here at the same time. The train carries her through three generations of postwar Japanese life. She questions what people choose to remember and what they let fade away. Katie searches for her place in a nation that feels both familiar and foreign. The journey becomes her attempt to understand aspiration and belonging, to make sense of how things fall apart and rebuild themselves.
Genres: literary-fiction, family-life, contemporary, asian-american
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, identity-crisis
Setting: Japan, Osaka
Period: Postwar
272 pages · Hardcover · Hamish Hamilton Ltd