The Closed Hand

A scholar and journalist/editor who focuses on relations between Asia and Latin America, Tsurumi examines how the sizable Japanese minority in Peru is portrayed by six contemporary non-Japanese Peruvian novelists and short-story writers and two Japanese Peruvian poets who are children of immigrants. Among her topics are images of the Orient/Japan in Spanish American literature from the Modernistas and beyond, a Japanese swashbuckler in La casa verde and a Japanese gangster in Travesuras de la ni�簣a mala (both by Nobel-prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa), a female Nikkei character in a pivotal role in Carmen Oll�穢's Las dos caras del deseo, and the Japanese experience in Peru as reflected in the poetry of Jos�穢 Watanabe. The book includes an appendix containing edited transcriptions of interviews with six of the eight authors studied. Annotation �穢2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)