Annal:1998 Kiriyama Prize for Fiction or Nonfiction

My Year of Meats: A Novel

Ruth L. Ozeki

• 1998 Kiriyama winner
• Score: 10.48

When Jane Takagi-Little finally lands a job—producing a Japanese television show sponsored by BEEF-EX, an organization promoting the export of U.S. meats—she takes her crew on the road in search of all-American wives cooking all-American meat. Over the course of filming, though, Jane makes a few troubling discoveries about both. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, in Japan, Akiko Ueno watches My American Wife! and diligently prepares Coca-Cola Roast and Panfried Prairie Oysters for her husband, John, (the ad-agency rep for the show’s sponsor). As Akiko fills out his questionnaires, rating each show on Authenticity, Wholesomeness, and Deliciousness of Meat, certain ominous questions about her own life—and the fact that after each meal she has to go to the bathroom and throw up—begin to surface.

A tale of love, global media, and the extraordinary events in the lives of two ordinary women, counterpointed by Sei Shonagon’s vibrant commentary, this first novel by filmmaker Ruth L. Ozeki—as insightful and moving as the novels of Amy Tan, as original as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. or John Irving—is a sparkling and original debut from a major new talent.

Cambodia: Report From a Stricken Land

Henry Kamm

• 1998 Kiriyama finalist
• Score: 6.48

In Cambodia: Report from a Stricken Land, former Southeast Asia correspondent for the New York Times and Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Kamm gives a clear and definitive history of contemporary Cambodia from 1970 to the present. For more than thirty years, Kamm’s high-level political and military connections allowed him unparalleled access to the leaders who shaped Cambodia into what it is today. Bringing to this work a unique expertise on Southeast Asia, he provides a poignant but clear-eyed portrait of a people and a beleaguered and complex country. For the first time, Kamm offers Western readers a much-needed analysis and understanding of those thirty turbulent years of revolution, invasion, coups d’etat, and genocide.

Galapagos: Islands Born of Fire

Tui De Roy

• 1998 Kiriyama finalist
• Score: 6.48

Ever since the days of Darwin, the Galapagos Islands have captured the imagination of the world. This book captures the ethereal—even haunting—quality of these islands, in words and pictures, like none other before it. For author Tui De Roy it is the culmination of a life’s work: thirty-five years of exploring and recording the secrets of Galapagos.

As well as visiting the coastlines, with their cold seas and burning rocks, sea lions and marine iguanas, the reader is taken into active volcanic calderas, where life hangs in the balance each time the volcano remakes itself; follows the seasons of the giant tortoise; dives into the twilight world of sperm whales and hammerhead sharks; and treads on still-steaming volcanic ground so new it has never felt a human footfall. Ten photo essays showcase the special birds and animals that make the Galapagos their home.

The text flows from an intimate knowledge of, and deep love for, the Galapagos and the quality of the imagery reflects the author’s recently awarded place as one of the world’s top twenty wildlife photographers. As the…

Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia

James L. Watson

• 1998 Kiriyama finalist
• Score: 6.48

McDonald’s restaurants are found in over 100 countries, serving tens of millions of people each day. What are the cultural implications of this phenomenal success? Does the introduction of American fast food undermine local cuisines, many of them celebrated for centuries? Does it, as some critics fear, presage a homogeneous, global culture?

Earlier studies of the fast food industry have emphasized production, focusing on labor or management. This book takes a fresh approach to the industry by concentrating on the perspective of the consumer. It analyzes consumers’ reactions to McDonald’s in five East Asian cities: Hong Kong, Beijing, Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo. The book argues that McDonald’s has largely become divorced from its American roots and become a “local” institution for an entire generation of affluent consumers in Hong Kong, Taipei, and Tokyo.

Localization is not, however, a one-way process; the corporation has also had to adapt in order to flourish in new settings. The book demonstrates how consumers, with the cooperation and encouragement of McDonald’s management,…

The Electrical Field: A Novel

Kerri Sakamoto

• 1998 Governor General's finalists
• 1998 Kiriyama finalist
• Score: 12.48

When the beautiful Chisako and her lover are found murdered in a park, members of a small Ontario suburb in the 1970s must finally acknowledge certain inescapable truths about one another and the way their community has been shaped by the dark shadow of World War II internment camps.

With all the suspense of a psychological thriller, The Electrical Field slowly exposes all those implicated in the murders—particularly Miss Saito, the novel’s unreliable narrator, through whom we gradually discover the truth. Like Kazuo Ishiguru in A Pale View of Hills, Kerri Sakamoto invokes a Japanese sense of the relativity of memory and reliability of consciousness. Miss Saito, middle-aged, caring for her elderly, bed-ridden father and her distracted younger brother, on the surface seems to be a passive observer. But her own disturbed past and her craving for an emotional connection will prove to have profound consequences.

A masterful and elegant story of passion, memory, and regret, The Electrical Field reaches deep into the past and into Canada’s communal response to war.

Under the Red Flag: Stories

Ha Jin

• 1998 Kiriyama finalist
• Score: 6.48

Set in the northern Chinese provincial town of Dismount Fort, these twelve stories offer a fascinating glimpse into the lives of peasants, soldiers, workers, and party officials during the Great Cultural Revolution. This was a time of social upheaval reaching into every home, when the Red Guard could drag a woman accused of prostitution through the streets; when a man trying to honor his mother’s dying wish runs up against party orthodoxy.

Ha Jin has been compared to the late Isaac Babel for his spare evocation of ordinary lives caught up in the flux of vast social movements. He is a writer of stark power, simple beauty, and poignant irony, whose themes of personal honor in the face of political rectitude are unmatched in American literature today.