The Outsider

The Outsider is a unique, multifaceted look at post-World War II Japan through the eyes of Sarah Berman, a six-year-old refugee who arrives in Tokyo from communist occupied Shanghai. The book traces her coming of age in a war torn confused Japan beset by the legacy of Japan’s military experience. She desperately wants to be accepted in her Japanese world as her family settles on a rural Japanese nobleman’s estate outside of a demolished Tokyo. Follow Sarah’s emotional journey as she tries to befriend the Japanese servants living on the estate and the homeless children living in the forest. Watch her grow older, become intimately involved with Japan’s political extremes, and make innocent mistakes that allow others to use her struggle for acceptance to achieve their own agendas. The story traces her evolution as she and her family are caught in the surging tides of post-war economic, political, and social activities—both legal and illegal. It is a sweeping story of growth, learning, and a desperate search for identity in the lives of a young woman and an entire country. History has written the fate of Japan during this worldwide period of transition, but what does fate have in store for this young and thoughtful outsider?