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The Floating World

The Floating World

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The Floating World

by Cynthia Kadohata (1956- )

  • Used
  • near fine
  • Hardcover
  • first
Condition
Near Fine/Fine
ISBN 10
0670826804
ISBN 13
9780670826803
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 3 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Fort Worth, Texas, United States
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About This Item

196 pages. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's quarter beige cloth with gilt lettering to spine over red boards in original pictorial jacket. First edition. In her first book, Kadohata works wonders in evoking the mysterious balance, imperfectly held, of a Japanese-American family drifting apprehensively during the 1950s in ``ukiyo ,'' a ``floating world'' of menial jobs and humble yet hopeful upward mobility pursued at the edges of an enchanted but exclusive American normalcy. Twelve-year-old Olivia, the first-person narrator, is a storyteller by temperament and heredity: her sharp-tongued, hot-tempered grandmother, who in her heyday had three husbands and seven lovers, ``owned a valise in which she carried all her possessions, but the stories she told were also possessions.'' Intelligent, impish, perpetually dislocated--``I wanted to stay where we were--where I didn't know anyone and no one knew me''--Olivia soon comes into possession of tales of her own: ``I sort of salivated inside whenever I met someone new. I was nosy, and I thought new people might tell me interesting things.'' Her shrewd roadside appraisals as the family travels from the Pacific Northwest to Arkansas in search of employment (hard to come by for Japanese at that time), and, years later, when Olivia sets out on her own for Los Angeles, range from a delicate appreciation of the American landscape to a frank appetite for the crasser curios of a foreign culture. With equal sympathy, Olivia turns her eye inward on her own family, offering an artless, prescient running commentary that never strains in the pursuit. In striking and keeping the tone of Olivia's voice, a bewitching composite of American brashness and expatriate otherness, Kadohata achieves perfect pitch inconspicuously, telling of the lonely and comic immigrant experience of "moving from the hard life just past to the life, maybe harder, to come." Condition: Remainder mark at head end pages else a near fine copy in a fine jacket.

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Details

Bookseller
The Book Collector ABAA, ILAB, TBA US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
BOOKS001575
Title
The Floating World
Author
Cynthia Kadohata (1956- )
Format/Binding
Hardcover
Book Condition
Used - Near Fine
Jacket Condition
Fine
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First
ISBN 10
0670826804
ISBN 13
9780670826803
Publisher
Viking Press
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
1989
Keywords
JAPANESE-AMERICANA
Bookseller catalogs
Literature;
Size
Octavo

Terms of Sale

The Book Collector ABAA, ILAB, TBA

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About the Seller

The Book Collector ABAA, ILAB, TBA

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 3 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2005
Fort Worth, Texas

About The Book Collector ABAA, ILAB, TBA

The Book Collector specializes in the finest collections of Chess, Anthropology, Americana and American Literature. Visit our website at www.bookcollectorshop.com

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Gilt
The decorative application of gold or gold coloring to a portion of a book on the spine, edges of the text block, or an inlay in...
Spine
The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
Remainder Mark
Usually an ink marking of some sort which indicates that the book was designated a remainder. In most cases, it can be found on...
Octavo
Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
First Edition
In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
Edges
The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
New
A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
Fine
A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
Cloth
"Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...

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