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.
“A delicate, elegiac tale, intensely moving and utterly convincing.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A mesmerizing novel full of tenderness and compassion, one that convincingly invests the Japanese empress's voice with all the nuance it demands.” —The Washington Post
“Schwartz leaps with prodigious skill. . . . Through painstaking research and a humane sensibility, he has opened a window on a strange, cloistered world.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Expertly evokes the sense of powerlessness and isolation that mark both royal life and bad marriages. . . . An artful meditation on the limits of love and duty.” —People
“A unique literary adventure, intimate, exotic; wonderfully imagined and achieved. The narrative impels the reader from first to last, immersing us in its flow of ancient acceptances and new demands. Splendid.” —Shirley Hazzard, author of The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire
“A fascinating and moving book in which great harm—all the more painful for being quiet and impersonal—befalls characters who, with one exception, are entirely innocent and sympathetic. The Commoner is a rare novel, wonderfully researched and beautifully written.” —Peter Matthiessen
“Schwartz pulls off a grand feat in giving readers a moving dramatization of a cloistered world.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
