The Commoner

Zusatztext “A delicate! elegiac tale! intensely moving and utterly convincing.” — The New York Times Book Review “A mesmerizing novel full of tenderness and compassion! one that convincingly invests the Japanese empress's voice with all the nuance it demands.” — The Washington Post “Schwartz leaps with prodigious skill. . . . Through painstaking research and a humane sensibility! he has opened a window on a strange! cloistered world.” — The Wall Street Journal “Expertly evokes the sense of powerlessness and isolation that mark both royal life and bad marriages. . . . An artful meditation on the limits of love and duty.” — People “A unique literary adventure! intimate! exotic; wonderfully imagined and achieved. The narrative impels the reader from first to last! immersing us in its flow of ancient acceptances and new demands. Splendid.” —Shirley Hazzard! author of The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire “A fascinating and moving book in which great harm—all the more painful for being quiet and impersonal—befalls characters who! with one exception! are entirely innocent and sympathetic. The Commoner is a rare novel! wonderfully researched and beautifully written.” —Peter Matthiessen  “Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) Informationen zum Autor John Burnham Schwartz is the author of the novels  Claire Marvel, Bicycle Days , and  Reservation Road , which was made into a motion picture based on his screenplay, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, and Jennifer Connelly. His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages and his writing has appeared in many publications, including the  New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe , and  Vogue . He lives with his wife and son in Brooklyn, New York. Klappentext It is 1959 when Haruko marries the Crown Prince of Japan. Thirty years later! now Empress herself! she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman to accept the marriage proposal of her son! with consequences both tragic and dramatic. 1 IN THE YEARS BEFORE THE WAR, my family lived in Shibuya Ward, in a large house with a walled garden. The sake brewing company that my father, Tsuneyasu Endo, had inherited from his father grew and prospered under his guidance, making him a respected figure in the business community. My mother’s family was older and more distinguished than my father’s, a fact that she neither promoted nor attempted to hide. As for me, born in 1934, the Year of the Dog, I was an only child and wore the proper skirts that my mother laid out for me each morning. I was fond of tennis, history, and calligraphy. There was, I suppose, nothing remarkable about me as a child, save for my father's love, for it was to me that he always told his favorite stories. Of the world beyond our garden walls, I had little awareness. I could not yet read the newspapers, and it was only in my teens that I grew to love the radio. Good girls like me, who spent hours each day following prescriptives meant to establish their unimpeachable credentials, were even more inward than they are today. One might say that my childhood insularity was a form of hereditary protection in whose shade, like a pale, delicate mushroom, I grew. The economic depression, omnipresent anxiety, and rising nationalism that had infected our nation and others weren’t things I spent time worrying about. The military was aligned under the Emperor, believing him to be a god worth dying and killing for—in his name a coup was staged and, in China, a massacre seen to its bloody end—while in his walled–and–moated palace in the center of our great capital, His Majesty remained augustly silent. On these matters, as on so many others of terrible ...

Relazione

A delicate, elegiac tale, intensely moving and utterly convincing.   The New York Times Book Review
A mesmerizing novel full of tenderness and compassion, one that convincingly invests the Japanese empress's voice with all the nuance it demands.   The Washington Post
Schwartz leaps with prodigious skill. . . . Through painstaking research and a humane sensibility, he has opened a window on a strange, cloistered world.   The Wall Street Journal
Expertly evokes the sense of powerlessness and isolation that mark both royal life and bad marriages. . . . An artful meditation on the limits of love and duty.   People
A unique literary adventure, intimate, exotic; wonderfully imagined and achieved. The narrative impels the reader from first to last, immersing us in its flow of ancient acceptances and new demands. Splendid.   Shirley Hazzard, author of The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire
A fascinating and moving book in which great harm all the more painful for being quiet and impersonal befalls characters who, with one exception, are entirely innocent and sympathetic. The Commoner is a rare novel, wonderfully researched and beautifully written.   Peter Matthiessen
  Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world.   Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: John Burnham Schwartz
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 06.01.2009
• EAN: 9781400096053
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-9605-3
• Pagine: 368
• Dimensioni: 132 mm x 204 mm x 18 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi