Karin Tanabe, "The Diplomat's Daughter"

Set during the Second World War, Tanabe’s fourth novel richly dramatizes the period’s turmoil and clashing allegiances. The narrative focuses on Emi Kato, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of a Japanese diplomat. Briefly held in a Texas internment camp after Pearl Harbor, she falls in love with Christian, a fellow prisoner of German descent. But once released and sent back to Japan, Emi realizes she still loves Leo, a Jewish refugee in Shanghai. Intercutting scenes of the three characters’ different experiences of the war, Tanabe, a former Politico reporter and the author most recently of The Gilded Years, tells a story of how love can survive—and enable survival—in even the harshest circumstances.

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