Inheritors

**Winner of the PEN/Open Book Award
Winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award**

A kaleidoscopic portrait of five generations scattered across Asia and the United States, Inheritors is a heartbreakingly beautiful and brutal exploration of a Japanese family fragmented by the Pacific side of World War II. A retired doctor is forced to confront the moral consequences of his wartime actions. His brother s wife, compelled to speak of a fifty-year-old murder, reveals the shattering realities of life in Occupied Japan. Half a century later, her estranged American granddaughter winds her way back East, pursuing her absent father s secrets. Decades into the future, two siblings face the consequences of their great-grandparents war as the world shimmers on the brink of an even more pervasive violence. Grappling with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war, Inheritors offers an intricate tapestry of stories illuminating the complex ways in which we live, interpret, and pass on our tangled histories.

“Stunning. . . . Serizawa’s brave storytelling gives us more than an epic arc. She creates a narrative that is in and of itself a multidimensional space.” —NPR

"Gripping . . . . Serizawa’s fiction is convincingly rooted in the intimate, yet still provocatively collective, quandaries of her characters.” —*The New York Times Book Review

• “Serizawa’s ability to weave complex histories into the personalexperiences of her characters proves that life is anything but linear.” —*The Boston Globe

• “This splendid book is a sword through the heart. Asako Serizawa depicts with rare acuity and nuance several generations of one far-flung family as it’s buffeted by the forces of war, migration,displacement, and that ultimate crucible, time.”—Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

  “These stories by Asako Serizawa are tremendous, intimate, startling, and essential; they show us how the past is sooften the most powerful force in what we idly call thepresent.” —Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labors

  “Stunning. . . . With beautiful lyrical prose, Serizawa presents a powerful and heartbreaking look into the ways war, colonization, and loss affect not only the survivors, but the generations that inherit these stories.” —Booklist

  “With her collection, Serizawa has made a point to pulltogether the emotional pieces of these devastating regional and world events. . . . It’s a noble undertaking, and one that feels necessary to remove some of the teeth from the horrors of that time for those who inherit it.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

  “Beautifully crafted, emotionally resonant, and profoundly moving. Asako Serizawa imbues her characters with so much depth and generosity that I felt as if I were reading about people I already knew and loved. An intensely powerful book by a writer with endless talent.” —Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans

  “Powerful, intelligent. . . . A book that deserves to becomea crucial pillar in the literature of war. . . . Inheritors reveals an author of fierce intellect looking at war legacies from this angle and that, working her way into their nuances. By deconstructing the toolkit of the novel, Serizawa dodges the inevitability of a war narrative to offer a wistful hope or a melodramatic tragedy. Instead, she creates a more powerful form in which she can align the pieces to magnify each other like the lenses of a telescope.” —Kenyon Review

  "[A] dynamic debut collection. . . . Serizawa delivers an elegant, stimulating web of stories.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “I was struck again and again not only by the remarkable scope and multiplicity of Inheritors but by the voices Serizawa inhabits—each is so distinct and yet wonderfully intimate. A book to be savored, slowly, overflowing with lifeblood and endurance.” —Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others

  “An assured debut.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Powerful tales of men and women struck by war; in Serizawa’s stories, war has no winners.” —Asian Review of Books

  “Masterly. . . . A seamless collection.” —Library Journal

  “Powerful. . . . A meticulously plotted narrative puzzle.” —Shelf Awareness

  Autorentext

  Asako Serizawa was born in Japan and grew up in Singapore, Jakarta, and Tokyo. A recent fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she has received two O. Henry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She currently lives in Boston. Inheritors is her first book. www.asakoserizawa.com

  Klappentext

  **Winner of the PEN/Open Book Award
  Winner of The Story Prize Spotlight Award

  A kaleidoscopic portrait of five generations scattered across Asia and the United States, Inheritors is a heartbreakingly beautiful and brutal exploration of a Japanese family fragmented by the Pacific side of World War II. A retired doctor is forced to confront the moral consequences of his wartime actions. His brother’s wife, compelled to speak of a fifty-year-old murder, reveals the shattering realities of life in Occupied Japan. Half a century later, her estranged American granddaughter winds her way back East, pursuing her absent father’s secrets. Decades into the future, two siblings face the consequences of their great-grandparents’ war as the world shimmers on the brink of an even more pervasive violence. Grappling with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war, Inheritors offers an intricate tapestry of stories illuminating the complex ways in which we live, interpret, and pass on our tangled histories.

  Leseprobe

Flight

First it was the names that went. Names of her neighbors, names of her grandchildren. Sometimes the names of her two daughters, her only son.

 

She knew their faces, of course. The daughter with the sharp eyes, always inspecting her, pressing her onward--always onward!--to the bathroom, the kitchen, anywhere that was away from the door, where she’d hesitated, no longer certain of her direction, or why.

 

The other daughter was pale-faced and forgiving. When she wandered lost among the tomato vines in her yard, it was this daughter who clasped her hands firmly in hers.

 

The son did not visit often. He called once a month. Who could blame him? His mother, who couldn’t be trusted with the baby. Who couldn’t be trusted with herself. Even as a boy he’d been prudent. Preserving himself against the world’s imperfections.

 

Then, one day, the streets began to go. The stark, narrow one, shortcut to the schoolyard where her children used to wait, fidgeting and hungry, racing at the sight of her. Then the route to the drugstore; the turn to the post office; the short leafy distance to the bakery with shelves of cinnamon bread she liked, lightly buttered, on rainy afternoons.

 

Her neighbors began finding her. Strolling up and down the road, peering into windows she recognized but could no longer place. Sometimes they found her at the bus stop considering the direction of her home, which was not on any bus route. Each time, the neighbors took her elbow--the younger ones kindly, the older ones angrily--all of them threatening to tell on her.

 

But how could she stay home? The sky shimmering outside her window, the trees like shadow puppets dancing on the lawn, the promise of her tomatoes plumping in the yard Edward had cleared for her, years ago, when they were both still young and had half the mortgage to pay. She couldn’t help it, her body yearning for the weight of the g…