The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz

The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz

In this national bestseller from the author of Reservation Road, a young woman, Haruko, becomes the first nonaristocratic woman to penetrate the Japanese monarchy.

When she marries the Crown Prince of Japan in 1959, Haruko is met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress, and controlled at every turn as she tries to navigate this mysterious, hermetic world, suffering a nervous breakdown after finally giving birth to a son. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman to accept the marriage proposal of her son, with tragic consequences. Based on extensive research, The Commoner is a stunning novel about a brutally rarified and controlled existence, and the complex relationship between two isolated women who are truly understood only by each other.

John Burnham Schwartz is the author of four previous novels: The Commoner, Claire Marvel, Bicycle Days, and Reservation Road, which was made into a motion picture based on his screenplay. His books have been translated into two dozen languages, and his writing has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker and The New York Times. A winner of the Lyndhurst Foundation Award for mastery in the art of fiction, Schwartz has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Harvard University, and Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently literary director of the Sun Valley Writers' Conference. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Aleksandra Crapanzano, and their son, Garrick.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781400096053
ISBN 10	1400096057
Title	The Commoner
Author	John Burnham Schwartz
Series	Vintage Contemporaries
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2009-01-06
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.