East Is East

What happens when a young Japanese seaman, inspired by dreams of the City of Brotherly Love and trained in the ways of the samurai, jumps ship off the coast of Georgia? What if he washes ashore on a barrier island inhabited by rednecks, descendants of black slaves, genteel retired people living in beachfront houses—and a colony of artists on the grounds of an old estate?

In the hands of T. Coraghessan Boyle—already acclaimed as an international phenomenon and called by The New York Times “one of the most inventive and verbally exuberant writers of his generation”—the result is a sort of Madama Butterfly in reverse: a sexy, savagely hilarious cross-cultural tragicomedy of thwarted expectations, mistaken identity, love, jealously, and betrayal.