East Is East

<b>A young Japanese seaman jumps ship and washes ashore on a barrier island in this marvelous [and] razor-edged (<i>Cosmopolitan</i>) novel from the <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author of <i>The Tortilla Curtain.</i></b><br><b><i> </i></b><br><b>A hilarious black farce about racial stereotypes selfish dreams and ambitions run hopelessly amok . . . It's a pastoral version of <i>The Bonfire of the Vanities</i>.--Michiko Kakutani <i>The New York Times</i></b> <p/>Japanese seaman Hiro Tanaka inspired by dreams of the City of Brotherly Love and trained in the ways of the samurai jumps ship off the coast of Georgia and swims into Tupelo Island a nest of rabid rednecks genteel ladies descendants of slaves and the denizens of an artists' colony. His arrival is not an auspicious one--he terrifies one islander literally to death. Fleeing the outraged survivors of his victim he finds refuge in the cabin of Ruth Dershowitz an aspiring novelist and resident of the artists' colony. Ruth a young woman of ambiguous talent and ambivalent ambition is simultaneously trying to prove herself as a writer manipulate the pecking order of the colony and carry on a thermovoltaic affair with the son of the colony's director--and Hiro suddenly finds himself a player in both scenarios. <p/>With <i>East Is East</i> T.C. Boyle--hailed by <i>The New York Times </i>as one of the most inventive and verbally exuberant writers of his generation--has written a sexy savagely uproarious cross-cultural tragicomedy of thwarted expectations mistaken identity love jealousy and betrayal.