Als der Kaiser ein Gott war

The debut novel by the successful Japanese-American author Julie Otsuka is finally being published in German. It has won the Asian American Literary Award, among others, and has been translated into numerous languages.
A sunny spring day in 1942, Berkeley, California. At the post office, her mother reads the evacuation order, goes home, and begins packing up the family's most important belongings. Like tens of thousands of other Japanese Americans in West Coast states, they are considered a security risk since the U.S. has been at war with Japan. Straightforward, precise, and stirring, Julie Otsuka's novel tells of the growing anti-Japanese sentiment among previously friendly neighbors, deportation to an internment camp in the desert highlands of Utah, precarious conditions in barracks behind barbed wire, fear and loneliness - and, finally, the family's return, for whom nothing will ever be the same again.
By illuminating a shameful chapter in U.S. history, the author also addresses a universal theme: racial prejudice and group-based misanthropy, as relevant today as they were 75 years ago.