The Buddha in the Attic

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 Étranger, 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.

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