This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross. My guest, Julie Otsuka, is an acclaimed novelist who's drawn

in her experiences as a Japanese American. Before I tell you about her new novel, let me tell you

about her first two. When the Emperor was divine, is based on the experiences of her mother,

uncle, and grandparents, when they were forced into Japanese American incarceration camps

during World War II. Her book The Buddha in the Attic, which won the Penn Faulkner Award for fiction,

is a historical novel about the women-knownist picture brides. These were women in the early 20th

century who emigrated to America from Japan the only way they legally could, by marrying a man

who was already living here. Working through matchmakers, the would-be husbands and wives knew

each other only from photos. When the women arrived and met their future husbands, they typically

realized they were deceived in one way or another. Otsuka's new novel The Swimmers starts off in a pool

where people go for temporary escape from their problems. One of the women is in the earliest

stages of dementia. In the second half of the novel, her dementia has progressed to the point where

she's in a facility. Her daughter, who's in her 40s and has been geographically and emotionally

distant, returns to see her mother. Otsuka takes inventory of the disappeared and remaining memories,

describes life in a facility after living with a husband for 40 years in a three-bedroom home,

and considers the daughter's sense of guilt. As you'll hear, Otsuka has a very distinctive style of

writing. Julie Otsuka, welcome to Fresh Air. I love your writing, so I'm very glad you're here.

I want to start with a reading from the first page of The Swimmers, your new novel,

because I want our listeners to hear your style of writing and how the accumulation of detail

just kind of keeps building through the book. So would you read the opening for us? Sure, I'd be happy to.

The pool is located deep underground in a large cavernous chamber, many feet beneath the streets of

our town. Some of us come here because we are injured and need to heal. We suffer from bad backs,

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