Annal:2008 Kiriyama Prize for Nonfiction

The Fragile Edge

Julia Whitty

• 2008 Kiriyama-Nonfiction winner
• Score: 10.58

Julia Whitty paints a mesmerizing, scientifically rich portrait of teeming coral reefs in the Tuamotu Archipelago, the Society Islands, and off the tiny nation of Tuvalu. The Fragile Edge takes us literally beneath the surface of the usual travel narrative—to the underwater equivalent of an African big-game safari, where hammerhead sharks rule a cascading chain of extraordinary underwater from eagle rays to reef sharks, while the sounds of courting humpback whales reverberate throughout the deep.

Equally inspiring for armchair or expert divers, The Fragile Edge illuminates Eastern-influenced diving techniques that transform our understanding of diving from sport to breath-inspired art. Whitty reports on the latest ways in which science extends our understanding of unfathomable waters, opening our eyes to the threats facing coral reefs and to why these fragile oases are vital to human survival.

East Wind Melts the Ice: A Memoir through the Seasons

Liza Dalby

• 2008 Kiriyama-Nonfiction finalist
• Score: 6.58

Structured according to the seasonal units of an ancient Chinese almanac, East Wind Melts the Ice is made up of 72 short chapters that can be read straight through or dipped into at random. In the essays, Dalby transports us from her Berkeley garden to the streets of Kyoto, to Imperial China, to the sea cliffs of Northern California, and to points beyond. Throughout these journeys, Dalby weaves her memories of living in Japan and becoming the first and only non-Japanese geisha, her observations on the recurring phenomena of the natural world, and meditations on the cultural aesthetics of Japan, China, and California. She illuminates everyday life as well, in stories of keeping a pet butterfly, roasting rice cakes with her children, watching whales, and pampering worms to make compost. In the manner of the Japanese personal poetic essay, this vibrant work comprises 72 windows on a life lived between cultures, and the result is a wonderfully engaging read.

The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Tom Bissell

• 2008 Kiriyama-Nonfiction finalist
• 2007 LATimes–Current Interest finalist
• Score: 12.58

In April 1975, as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army, John Bissell, a former Marine officer living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, was struggling to save his marriage, raise his sons, and live with his memories of the war in Vietnam, Bissell found himself racked with anguish and horror as his country abandoned a cause for which so many of his friends had died.

The Father of All Things is Tom Bissell’s powerful reckoning with the Vietnam War and its impact on his father, his country, and Vietnam itself. Through him we learn what it was like to grow up with a gruff but oddly tender veteran father who would wake his children in the middle of the night when the memories got too painful. Bissell also explores the many debates about the war, from whether it was winnable to Ho Chi Minh’s motivations to why America’s leaders lied so often. Above all, he shows how the war has continued to influence American views on foreign policy more than thirty years later.

India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

Ramachandra Guha

• 2008 Kiriyama-Nonfiction finalist
• Score: 6.58

Born against a background of privation and civil war, divided along lines of caste, class, language and religion, independent India emerged as a united and democratic country. This remarkable book tells the full story—the pain and the struggle, the humiliations and the glories—of the world’s largest and least likely democracy.

Ramachandra Guha writes compellingly of the myriad protests and conflicts that have peppered the history of free India. But he writes also of the factors and processes that have kept the country together (and kept it democratic), defying numerous prophets of doom who believed that its poverty and heterogeneity would force India to break up or come under autocratic rule. Once the Western world looked upon India with a mixture of pity and contempt; now it looks upon India with fear and admiration.

Massively researched and elegantly written, India After Gandhi is at once a magisterial account of India’s rebirth and the work of a major scholar at the height of his powers.

The Talented Women of the Zhang Family

Susan Mann

• 2008 Kiriyama-Nonfiction finalist
• Score: 6.58

The history of China in the nineteenth century usually features men as the dominant figures in a chronicle of warfare, rebellion, and dynastic decline. This book challenges that model and provides a different account of the era, history as seen through the eyes of women. Basing her remarkable study on the poetry and memoirs of three generations of literary women of the Zhang family—Tang Yaoqing, her eldest daughter, and her eldest granddaughter—Susan Mann illuminates a China that has been largely invisible. Drawing on a stunning array of primary materials—published poetry, gazetteer articles, memorabilia—as well as a variety of other historical documents, Mann reconstructs these women’s intimate relationships, personal aspirations, values, ideas, and political consciousness. She transforms our understanding of gender relations and what it meant to be an educated woman during China’s transition from empire to nation and offers a new view of the history of late imperial women.