Tree of Heaven - Hardcover

Binstock, R. C.

3.36

50 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569470383 ISBN 13: 9781569470381

Publisher: Soho Pr Inc, 1995

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Set against the violence of Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s, a love story tells of a Chinese woman who becomes the servant of a Japanese officer after he rescues her, and the strange intimacy that develops between them.

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About the Author:

I started writing stories around age eight. At Harvard I studied writing with Ann Beattie, Monroe Engel, and Grace Mojtabai. My story collection THE LIGHT OF HOME was published by Atheneum in 1992, and my novels TREE OF HEAVEN and THE SOLDIER by Soho in 1995 and 1996. My writing career was interrupted in the late 1990s. The publication of my novel SWIFT RIVER in 2014, my own edition of TREE OF HEAVEN in 2015, and NATIVE CHILD in 2016 represent my renewed effort to write and be read. I have lived in Cambridge, Mass for since 1976. Learn more about my books at http://rcbinstock.com.

From Publishers Weekly:

This beautifully written debut novel by the author of the story collection The Light of Home explores the universal parameters of trust and fear, coercion and choice, guilt and forgiveness. It's a moving tale of fateful love between a sensitive Japanese army officer and the homeless, ragged Chinese woman whom he rescues during Japan's 1938 invasion of China. Kuroda, the Japanese captain, a botanist by profession, views Japan's occupation of China as a senseless crime and is disgusted with his countrymen who rape, loot, burn, murder and maim at will. When four of his men drunkenly assault Li, a Chinese vagabond who has been cast out by her husband for being infertile, Kuroda saves her from rape and makes her his servant and captive. After the two become lovers, Kuroda, who has a wife and daughter back in Japan, is branded an immoral eccentric in the eyes of his troops, while Li is scorned by the Chinese townfolk as a traitor and prostitute. Through an exquisitely limpid style and what appears to be considerable research, Binstock's stunning account of a doomed affair, told through the lovers' alternating voices, is wholly convincing both in its historical details and in its meticulous exploration of love, obsession and loss.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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