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The Book of Kane and Margaret
Winner of FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize
A novel about two teenage lovers who disrupt a World War II internment camp in Arizona
Kane Araki and Margaret Morri are not only the names of teenage lovers living in a World War II Japanese relocation camp. Kane Araki is also the name of a man who, mysteriously, sprouts a pair of black raven’s wings overnight. Margaret Morri is the name of the aging healer who treats embarrassing conditions (smelly feet and excessive flatulence). It’s also the name of an eleven-year-old girl who communes with the devil, trading human teeth for divine wishes.
In The Book of Kane and Margaret, dozens of Kane Arakis and Margaret Morris populate the Canal and Butte camp divisions in Gila River. Amidst their daily rituals and family dramas, they find ways to stage quiet revolutions against a domestic colonial experience. Some internees slip through barbed wire fences to meet for love affairs. Others attempt to smuggle whiskey, pornography, birds, dogs, horses, and unearthly insects into their family barracks. And another seeks a way to submerge the internment camp in Pacific seawater.
A novel about two teenage lovers who disrupt a World War II internment camp in Arizona
Kane Araki and Margaret Morri are not only the names of teenage lovers living in a World War II Japanese relocation camp. Kane Araki is also the name of a man who, mysteriously, sprouts a pair of black raven’s wings overnight. Margaret Morri is the name of the aging healer who treats embarrassing conditions (smelly feet and excessive flatulence). It’s also the name of an eleven-year-old girl who communes with the devil, trading human teeth for divine wishes.
In The Book of Kane and Margaret, dozens of Kane Arakis and Margaret Morris populate the Canal and Butte camp divisions in Gila River. Amidst their daily rituals and family dramas, they find ways to stage quiet revolutions against a domestic colonial experience. Some internees slip through barbed wire fences to meet for love affairs. Others attempt to smuggle whiskey, pornography, birds, dogs, horses, and unearthly insects into their family barracks. And another seeks a way to submerge the internment camp in Pacific seawater.
298 pages, Paperback
First published March 3, 2020
9 people are currently reading
1511 people want to read
About the author
Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
5 books21 followersKiik Araki-Kawaguchi writes dreampop speculative fictions and darkwave minimalist poetry that can be enjoyed on a bus ride or in line for coffee. All his best stories have something to do with talking insects. His best poems are X-Men fan fiction. He is the author of DISINTEGRATION MADE PLAIN AND EASY and THE BOOK OF KANE AND MARGARET.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 27, 2021
I didn't know what to expect from this book. I was hesitant when I saw WWII because I don't have the attention span for 'period pieces', but HOLY SMOKES HOW WRONG I WAS! My jaw dropped before page 5 and the tears arrived before page 10. This is one of the most inventive and magnificent novels I have ever read. Told in fragmented doses of surrealism and awe where each chapter seemingly starts from scratch while still gathering past baggage. Reading this book felt like hallucinating in the desert, hearing campfire tales beyond human comprehension. It's a smoke signal in the dust, it's a god-like insect resting on velvet. It's 100 dreams within one fully original book.
October 21, 2019
I had the good fortune of reading this book in manuscript form and found it to be surprising, with a blend of the historical and the fantastical, and full of lyricism. I wish there were more books like it. THE BOOK OF KANE AND MARGARET is both a mirror and a window, revealing the world as it is but also showing the unique perspective of the narrator. It is full of potent images and moments of revelation. I highly recommend it.
March 22, 2020
In these strange and difficult times, when my time to read has greatly inflated yet my capacity for immersion has vastly diminished, came The Book of Kane and Margaret. Ten days I read it and nothing else. Small bites, slowly chewed; morsels savored.
Highest recommendation if you can lay your hands on it.
Highest recommendation if you can lay your hands on it.
July 16, 2024
This was just so beautiful and unique - I've never read a book quite like it.
December 26, 2020
"Who says your body is the house where this dream is happening?"
What a lovely read! I've been dying to get a copy of this book for months because I knew I would love it. "The Book of Kane and Margaret" is masterfully written and criminally under-known and under-hyped.
At first, I approached it as a novel, like the name says, but I think it's best to start it knowing it most resembles a collection of short stories. That's why I didn't give it 5 stars, because, like in all collections of short stories, there were some chapters that I didn't like at all. However, I'm positive some will linger in me for a long time: the one with the lullabies, the one with the soup, the one with the swimming pool, the one with the frog, the one with the thin walls (which was my favorite)...
The book is also punctuated with lovely illustrations, that make me want to tear those pages from the book and hang them on my walls.
If you love very weird, wholesome, gruesome, lovely stories you will love "The Book of Kane and Margaret", but I don't think this book is for everyone.
What a lovely read! I've been dying to get a copy of this book for months because I knew I would love it. "The Book of Kane and Margaret" is masterfully written and criminally under-known and under-hyped.
At first, I approached it as a novel, like the name says, but I think it's best to start it knowing it most resembles a collection of short stories. That's why I didn't give it 5 stars, because, like in all collections of short stories, there were some chapters that I didn't like at all. However, I'm positive some will linger in me for a long time: the one with the lullabies, the one with the soup, the one with the swimming pool, the one with the frog, the one with the thin walls (which was my favorite)...
The book is also punctuated with lovely illustrations, that make me want to tear those pages from the book and hang them on my walls.
If you love very weird, wholesome, gruesome, lovely stories you will love "The Book of Kane and Margaret", but I don't think this book is for everyone.
May 22, 2020
This is the camp novel I didn't know I needed. This is the camp novel I have been waiting all my life for.
I have read a lot of camp novels. None of them have really truly satisfied me. While there are some good ones out there and some important ones too, they always seemed a little too reserved, a little too buttoned up for me to enjoy. Most of them are written by nisei and sansei. Maybe there's something constraining about writing about something you had to bear witness to. It's hard to imagine things when something like this has happened to you. Most of the time, if you can remember, you'll be damned if you are going to talk about it to your kids.
This is a novel of short vignettes about life in the Gila River Internment/Concentration/Incarceration Camp, linked by the presence of two characters named Margaret Morri and (Yoshi)Kane Araki. Margaret and Kane can be babies or old people, sometimes they are a person with wings, or an insect. Sometimes they are already dead or have just barely been born yet. Most of the time they love each other. Sometimes they hate each other. Sometimes they haven't ever met. They are always from the Central California Coast.
This is a novel that is extremely irreverent. The characters accomplish great things, breaking out of prison by growing wings or looking like a hakujin guy. The characters are also petty. They have loud, spiteful, foolhardy sex. They get obsessed with strange things. They are complicit in their own division and destruction. They have unrealistic dreams. They talk to mysterious and sinister animals and make deals with them.
While some of these things are both impossible and fantastical, when you think that Toyo Miyatake built a contraband camera out of carved wood and smuggled parts, or that someone built an entire illegal basement under their barrack room, or that people designed and planted Japanese gardens in the desert, these things don't seem that fantastical.
This is a magical realist novel. Like a lot of magical realist novels it brings a terrible time for a people into painful detail by being both too magical and too real. Humorous, terrible, and smelling like the dusty broken down pachinko machine in my ba-chan's garage, all too real. I loved it.
I have read a lot of camp novels. None of them have really truly satisfied me. While there are some good ones out there and some important ones too, they always seemed a little too reserved, a little too buttoned up for me to enjoy. Most of them are written by nisei and sansei. Maybe there's something constraining about writing about something you had to bear witness to. It's hard to imagine things when something like this has happened to you. Most of the time, if you can remember, you'll be damned if you are going to talk about it to your kids.
This is a novel of short vignettes about life in the Gila River Internment/Concentration/Incarceration Camp, linked by the presence of two characters named Margaret Morri and (Yoshi)Kane Araki. Margaret and Kane can be babies or old people, sometimes they are a person with wings, or an insect. Sometimes they are already dead or have just barely been born yet. Most of the time they love each other. Sometimes they hate each other. Sometimes they haven't ever met. They are always from the Central California Coast.
This is a novel that is extremely irreverent. The characters accomplish great things, breaking out of prison by growing wings or looking like a hakujin guy. The characters are also petty. They have loud, spiteful, foolhardy sex. They get obsessed with strange things. They are complicit in their own division and destruction. They have unrealistic dreams. They talk to mysterious and sinister animals and make deals with them.
While some of these things are both impossible and fantastical, when you think that Toyo Miyatake built a contraband camera out of carved wood and smuggled parts, or that someone built an entire illegal basement under their barrack room, or that people designed and planted Japanese gardens in the desert, these things don't seem that fantastical.
This is a magical realist novel. Like a lot of magical realist novels it brings a terrible time for a people into painful detail by being both too magical and too real. Humorous, terrible, and smelling like the dusty broken down pachinko machine in my ba-chan's garage, all too real. I loved it.
March 27, 2021
I think my first book of 'short stories' in that each chapter was relatively self-contained and I found that aspect really enjoyable. Some stories definitely piqued my interest more than others. I dived into this book thinking I might learn a bit more about WW2. I did get to see the war from a different perspective i.e. that of a Japanese internment camp, however the stories definitely took precedence over the oppressive backdrop. I think what precluded me from loving this book is that I was continually waiting for something to 'happen', and it's just not that sort of novel. It idles along and we don't know which versions of Kane and Margaret are 'real'; in fact there seems to be no reason for many of them - they do not seem to assist in world-building or even character development. Nevertheless, I appreciated the book's quirky nature and the subtle humour.
November 1, 2022
Kane and Margaret are the central characters in what might be described as a series of short, almost mythical stories situated in WWII Japanese relocation camps in the United States. In some stories both characters appear, in some, only one does. Sometimes they are lovers. Sometimes one is an insect (usually with great wisdom to share or magical powers to bestow). While the overall time and place remain the same, the characters morph in each story creating a kind of narrative rebellion within confinement as daily life and human desires find creative and sometimes surreal outlets. These stories are odd, often funny, sometimes bluntly sexual. There's an element of hope/liberation that flutters just above submission and tragedy. Araki-Kawaguchi shows how you can physically encage the human spirit, but you cannot stop it from trying to spread its wings.
August 25, 2021
Oh my god this book was so weird and delightful. I thought all the different Kanes and Margarets would confuse me, but they just gave me a sense of familiarity or recognition as I started each story. The thread of connection through the stories is brilliant. Each story had a surface level reading and then a deeper meaning related to the larger context of the injustice of the Japanese internment camps. I especially loved the tender "absence of an ocean", and "a lesson" made me laugh so much. Also "a goshawk" (the laundry folding competition story) made me laugh too.
March 3, 2026
Brought this to the galápagos and was unable to describe what I was reading to any one else lol!
Difficult to understand the big picture of why sequences were strung together in the way that they were. But the standouts truly cut deep, esp at the end. Exceptional + love it when an author commits to the bit
Difficult to understand the big picture of why sequences were strung together in the way that they were. But the standouts truly cut deep, esp at the end. Exceptional + love it when an author commits to the bit
April 29, 2020
A charming little book of stories about a Japanese couple in an Arizona internment camp during WWII, who appear in every chapter as different characters in strange, whimsical, sad, and beautiful stories, with no shortage of curious dreams and talking insects.
December 23, 2020
Strange but beautifully crafted stories of detainees in a internment camp during world war 2.
March 27, 2021
Enjoyed, and a very unique book.
Didn't fully "get it" though and I blame myself more than the book. I think many people would enjoy this and take more away from it than I did.
In saying that, it was an entertaining style, with really enjoyable characters and stories intertwined with a bit of a history lesson in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II which I knew nothing about.
Good book, would just about recommend to those who aren't afraid to be adventurous.
Didn't fully "get it" though and I blame myself more than the book. I think many people would enjoy this and take more away from it than I did.
In saying that, it was an entertaining style, with really enjoyable characters and stories intertwined with a bit of a history lesson in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II which I knew nothing about.
Good book, would just about recommend to those who aren't afraid to be adventurous.
January 19, 2022
the names and switching of characters caused some confusion at the start but i got used to it and i thought the language was really beautiful :)
May 25, 2023
a metamorphoses!
April 18, 2024
Literally my favorite book. Read it freshman year of HS for a class and just. fell in love. The motifs, the reuse of names to tell stories, the folktales... perfect.
January 27, 2026
It felt like hearing about stories that were passed down from generations. Beautiful.
November 21, 2020
Gem after gem. The structure is brilliantly used. Highly recommend.
February 21, 2020
Extremely well written, thought provoking and whimsical. The characters are thoughtfully built, and their presence remains with you long after the book is finished. I hope Kiik graces the literary world with more of his work.
March 24, 2022
A treasure! A delight! It's incredible how quickly I could be transformed from a puddle of tears to fully throwing my head back in laughter. Highly recommend.
January 19, 2026
Lady Gaga saying brilliant talented stunning…
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews