The Pearl Diver
Page 19
JEFF TALARIGO
the pearl diver
Jeff Talarigo, a former journalist, lived in a Palestinian refugee camp where he wrote several works of short fiction that were published in literary journals, including The Maryland Review, The Arkansas Review, and Chanteh. He has been writing and teaching English in Japan since the early 1990s, and lives with his wife and son on the island of Kyushu.
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Jeff Talarigo
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places,
events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to quote:
the Imperial Household Agency, for Empress Sadako’s tanka for Hansen’s disease; the
Akashi Kaijin Support Group, for the tanka by Akashi Kaijin, from the poetry
collection Haku Byo, 1939.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday edition
as follows:
Talarigo, Jeff.
The pearl diver: a novel / Jeff Talarigo.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Pearl divers—Fiction. 2. Women—Japan—Fiction. 3. Leprosy—Patients—Fiction.
4. Leprosy—Hospitals—Fiction. 5. Kokuritsu Ryåyåjo Nagashima Aiseien—Fiction.
6. Japan—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.A525P43 2004
813’.6—dc21
2003054893
www.anchorbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42914-8
v3.0
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Praise
Shores Isolation
The Artifacts of Nagashima
Across The Channel
Acknowledgments
Epilogue
About The Author
Copyright Page