El amante japonés/ The Japanese Lover

Good book interesting combination of different characters

A story of true, ever lasting love. Also a story of deep understanding and appreciation for other’s life experiences and desires. It is about acceptance and understanding. The book is hopeful, graceful, with a deep reverence for the human condition and life. Something we could all use on the challenging years ahead. Highly recommend.

This book taught me so much about the Japanese internment camps through the Fukuda family experience. Isabel does it again! Incredible story telling with interesting, imperfect characters that truly come to life!

Yes, I'm crying. This is such a beautiful book. The details and the story..just so well written!! I read it in Spanish and I felt so much pain at the end of this story. Almost bittersweet.

Este libro es sumamente interesante a pesar de que el inicio es un poco lento, luego la narración adquiere más ritmo. Es exquisita la forma en que escribe Isabel Allende y como conjuga tantos datos, como nos lleva del pasado al presente y como coloca en contexto a sus protagonistas en un tiempo tan difícil como la Alemania nazi, las persecuciones a los judíos y polacos y los campos de concentración en Estados Unidos luego del ataque a Pearl Harbor y que constituyeron una violación a los derechos de los japoneses. Sin dudas, este es un libro que merece la pena leer de manera cuidadosa y tratando de entender lo frágil que es la vida después de la ancianidad, los graves casos que se presentan de pornografía infantil, la historia y sobre todo, el hecho de que hay amores que no pueden vivir a la luz pero que sobreviven a través del tiempo. ¡Exquisito este libro!

Este es el último libro de Isabel Allende y me ha dejado con un buen sabor de boca general, no tanto porque sea muy bueno, sino porque me parece que la autora vuelve al estilo que le conocíamos bien y que gustaba tanto hasta antes de escribir los tres libros para adolescentes que creo hizo pensando en sus sobrinos. La trama está bien, a secas, y para mi gusto le faltó un poco de "chispa". El desarrollo de la novela me gustó y creo que la Sra. Allende demuestra por qué es una de las grandes escritoras latinoamericanas. Me parece que con este libro la autora se sacudió al fin el estilo para adolescentes (ni encantador para niños ni emocionante o profundo para adultos) con que escribió todavía su libro anterior, de Ripley. Ojalá continúe con su estilo de siempre y nos haga esperar con impaciencia su siguiente libro, como antes. Mientras tanto, aunque este libro no sea de lo mejor que he leído de ella, vale la pena leerlo.

The edition is very good. It's a great story. Easy to read and very enjoyable throughout the whole book. Totally recommended.

Es una novela muy sencilla y ligera, con la historia de un amor para toda la vida. Me ha gustado volver a Isabel Allende con esta lectura que me deja el corazón calientito.

What strikes me with most of Isabel Allende’s novels, above all with the best of them – and 'The Japanese Lover' is right up there with the best – is their strong story lines and their intensely appealing, vividly drawn and highly believable characters. In 'The Japanese Lover' we have a young woman it’s easy to empathise with, Irina, a Moldovan immigrant to the United States. She has a difficult past but an optimistic present, made all the more glowing by her engaging personality and readiness to work hard for others. In California, where she now lives, Irina meets Alma, an escapee from the Holocaust, who has been there a lot longer – since the 1930s. She’s a woman much guided by conventions but whose life has embraced a massively unconventional series of events. Then there’s Ichimei, the son of Japanese immigrants, who has inherited his father’s love of plants and his talent as a gardener, but also has a strange and never fully exploited skill as an artist, together with a wonderfully cool, self-controlled temperament alongside a great capacity for passion within. These three lives, and those of a whole cast of supporting characters, often with intriguing stories of their own, always with personalities that grab our attention, interweave and enrich each other to make the powerful story of the novel. A story full of surprises, which was one of the novel's aspects that I most enjoyed. It turns out that the lover of the Japanese lover isn’t who I thought it was going to be. Another surprise was that, having rather moved away from the magic realism of her early novels – 'The House of the Spirits' is quite explicit in its use of supernatural elements – in 'The Japanese Lover', Allende introduces just a dash of it in the last few pages, in a way that doesn’t feel artificial and which heightens the appeal of an ending that was already heading towards a moving climax. There are plenty of other surprises too. In a book that covers decades of time, we get several back stories for the main characters, and more than one with shocking turning points. And, as always with Allende, there are political themes too. In this case, unlike in many of her other novels, they aren’t from her native Chile. Instead, we get Jews fleeing – or failing to flee – the Holocaust in Poland. We get Japanese Americans interned in the US in what Allende, not unjustifiably, calls concentration camps rather than detention centres. That was an action which remains the blackest mark on an administration that generally attempted to be reasonably liberal, that of Franklin Roosevelt. The detention of legally resident Japanese, to say nothing of American citizens, often American-born, of Japanese descent, was always a move of highly doubtful constitutionality. To say nothing of its being a deeply unethical one. And, finally, there’s the twist to Irina’s story, whose difficult past turned out to have been a lot tougher than I’d guessed at first. As always, then, a huge panoply of characters, stories, history and charm. The Japanese Lover is Allende once more at her best. A novel to enjoy and not to miss.

Tenía mucho tiempo que no leía un libro que me hiciera llorar y a la vez conocer el tema de la migración japonesa hacia Estados Unidos!

Bellissimo libro, coinvolgente, poetico, magico come tutti i libri di Isabel Allende, che se letti in lingua originale, acquistano ancora di più il loro fascino. Lo consiglio tantissimo.

très bon style d'écriture d'Isabel Allende, ce roman nous emporte comme toux ceux du même auteur. Un plaisir de lire en espagnol.

Isabel Allende es una gran escritora que nunca decepciona. Un libro que toca muchas partes de tu alma. Simplemente impresionante.