by Jay Rubin
 
“A breathtaking novel, it stayed with me long after I turned the final page.” – Scott Pack, publisher, The Friday Project
 
Opening in the stress-filled years before World War II, The Sun Gods tells the story of a widowed white minister and his son who meet a beautiful new arrival from Japan with a troubled past. The bombing of Pearl Harbor intrudes upon whatever happiness they might have had together, and the combination of race prejudice and war hysteria carries the action from Seattle to the Minidoka Internment Camp in Idaho.
Nearly two decades later, the son is ready to graduate from college when memories of Minidoka and of his erstwhile Japanese mother begin to haunt him, and he embarks on a journey that will lead him from Seattle's International District to war-ravaged Japan in his attempt to discover the truth about his past.
 
Jay Rubin is one of the foremost English language translators of Japanese literature. He is best known for his numerous translations of works by Haruki Murakami, Japan’s leading contemporary novelist. Most recently, he translated the first two books of Murakami’s bestselling novel, 1Q84. In addition, Rubin’s Making Sense of Japanese remains a widely used guide to Japanese language studies. Rubin received his PhD in Japanese literature from the University of Chicago and taught at Harvard University and the University of Washington. He lives near Seattle with his wife.