The Swimmers pdf

Otsuka was born in May 15, 1962, in Palo Alto, California. She has taught at Columbia University, Yale University, and Columbia University School of the Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1984. She later graduated from Columbia University with a Master of Fine Arts in 1999.
Her father worked as an aerospace engineer and her mother worked as a lab technician before she gave birth to Otsuka. Both of her parents were of Japanese descent, with her father being an issei and her mother being a nisei. When she was nine, her family moved to Palos Verdes, California. She has two brothers, one of whom, Michael Otsuka, teaches at the London School of Economics.
Her debut novel When the Emperor was Divine dealt with Japanese American internment during World War II. It was published in 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf. Her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic (2011), is about Japanese picture brides.
Otsuka's historical fiction novels deal with Japanese Americans. Her books call attention to the plight of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Otsuka lives in New York City.

The Swimmers pdf by Julie Otsuka

From the award winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine, a tour de force of economy, precision, and emotional power about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool.
The swimmers are unknown to each other except through their private routines (slow lane, fast lane), and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief.
One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese internment camp in which she spent the war. Narrated by Alice's daughter, who witnesses her stark and devastating decline, The Swimmers is a searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters, and the sorrows of implacable loss, written in spellbinding, incantatory prose.
The most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master.