The Book of Kane and Margaret
A Novel
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF FC2’S RONALD SUKENICK INNOVATIVE FICTION PRIZE
A novel about two teenage lovers who disrupt a World War II internment camp in Arizona
Kane Araki and Margaret Morri are not only the names of teenage lovers living in a World War II Japanese relocation camp. Kane Araki is also the name of a man who, mysteriously, sprouts a pair of black raven’s wings overnight. Margaret Morri is the name of the aging healer who treats embarrassing conditions (smelly feet and excessive flatulence). It’s also the name of an eleven-year-old girl who communes with the devil, trading human teeth for divine wishes.
In The Book of Kane and Margaret, dozens of Kane Arakis and Margaret Morris populate the Canal and Butte camp divisions in Gila River. Amidst their daily rituals and family dramas, they find ways to stage quiet revolutions against a domestic colonial experience. Some internees slip through barbed wire fences to meet for love affairs. Others attempt to smuggle whiskey, pornography, birds, dogs, horses, and unearthly insects into their family barracks. And another seeks a way to submerge the internment camp in Pacific seawater.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Araki-Kawaguchi's inventive, surreal novel in stories (after Disintegration Made Plain and Easy) follows a group of characters who leave the bounds of a WWII-era Japanese internment camp through magic and mischief. Each loosely connected vignette centers on a wildly different iteration of Yoshikane "Kane" Araki and Margaret Morri. In one story, a man named Kane grows a pair of wings and crosses the camp's barbed wire to mingle freely in the "nearest Arizona Chinatown." Elsewhere, another Kane leaves the camp by passing as white, not by "any sort of skin condition" but by adopting a confident posture. Margaret Morri appears as a singing cicada; a woman who uses men to reenact the last day with her husband, who disappeared after "going over the wire"; and a young typist seduced by an enchanted frog. Later, Kane and Margaret are octogenarian spouses who reignite their sex lives to compete with the "noises of newly married couples fiercely, hysterically fucking each other" in their barracks' neighboring bunks. Some stories employ realism to bring the trauma and small rebellions of the camp into sharp relief, such as one about an interned young mother worried about her infant daughter and a dismissive nurse. This beautifully rendered reflection on a dark moment of American history will appeal to fans of literary speculative fiction.
