The release date for the English version of 'The Swimmers' by
Julie Otsuka is Feb 2022. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
A tour de force of economy, accuracy, and emotional impact about what happens to a group of devoted recreational swimmers after a crack forms at the bottom of their neighborhood pool, from the award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and after the Emperor Was Divine.
Other than their private routines (quick lane, slow lane) and the comfort each finds in their morning or afternoon laps, the swimmers are strangers to one another. But as a fissure opens up at the bottom of the pool, they are thrown into a merciless realm with no means of escape or solace.
Alice is a swimmer among them; she is gradually losing her memories. The pool was Alice's last line of defense against the creeping blackness of her dementia. She is dragged into recollections of her early years and the Japanese internment camp she spent the war in, lost in disarray and disorder without the company of other swimmers and the pattern of her daily laps. The Swimmers is a searing, personal narrative of mothers and daughters, and the pains of unrelenting loss, written in enthralling, incantatory writing. It is narrated by Alice's daughter, who observes her abrupt and heartbreaking deterioration.
The contemporary master's most compelling and memorable piece to date.