Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: The Translation of Love
Subtitle: A Novel
Author: Lynne Kutsukake
Narrator: Nancy Wu
Format: Unabridged
Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
Language: English
Release date: 04-05-16
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
An emotionally gripping portrait of postwar Japan, where a newly repatriated girl must help a classmate find her missing sister.
Born and raised in Vancouver, 13-year-old Aya Shimamura is released from a Canadian internment camp only to be repatriated to Japan with her father, who was faced with an unsettling choice: move east of the Rocky Mountains or go back to Japan. With no hope of restitution and grieving the loss of Aya's mother during internment, her father feels there's nothing left for them in Canada and signs a form that enables the government to deport him.
But life in Tokyo is not much better. Aya's father struggles to find work, compromising his morals and toiling long hours. Aya, meanwhile, is something of a pariah at her school, bullied for being foreign and paralyzed when asked to communicate in Japanese. Aya's alienation is eventually mitigated by one of her principal tormentors, a willful girl named Fumi Tanaka, whose older sister has mysteriously disappeared.
When a rumor surfaces that Douglas MacArthur, who is overseeing the Allied occupation of Japan, sometimes helps citizens in need, Fumi enlists Aya to compose a letter asking the general to find her beloved sister. The letter is delivered into the reluctant hands of Corporal Matt Matsumoto, a Japanese American serving with the Allied forces, whose endless job is translating the thousands of letters MacArthur receives each week. Matt feels an affinity toward Fumi but is largely powerless, and the girls decide to take matters into their own hands, venturing into the dark and dangerous world of Tokyo's red-light district.
Told through rich, interlocking storylines, The Translation of Love mines a turbulent period to show how war irrevocably shapes the lives of the conquered - and yet the novel also allows for a poignant spark of resilience, friendship, and love that translates across cultures and borders to stunning effect.
Members Reviews:
A Beautifully Written And Moving Story
When I saw the title and read the blurb (back of the book), I immediately wanted to read it. I tend to be drawn to stories that focus on the human struggle and emotion, along with personal growth, and I believe this story illustrated that.
Though the story could be described as a collection of short stories intertwined with each other, the book had a common plot and theme, which was to find Fumiâs, one of the young school age girls in the story, older sister.
As Fumiâs mission became the focal point of the story, I began to understand how life in post war Japan had transformed peopleâs motivations. I also began to see the frustrations, many, especially the older generation, had due to a loss of culture and life before the war.
As others, such as Matt, the Japanese American soldier, and Kondo, Ayaâs and Fumiâs teacher, joined in the effort to locate Fumiâs sister, I learned about their struggles to relate to a changed world and make sense of it. I ended the book with the feeling of knowing that in the end, we as humans are all in the fight of life, the struggle of life, together, and though our backgrounds may differ, we share the commonality of wanted to make sense and survive in the world we live in.
I have no strong negatives for this story, other than there were a couple instances where I felt the story dragged a little.
