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256 pages hardcover
Finished books available
US: Norton, Winter 1999
Canada: Knopf, Spring 1999
UK: Macmillan, Winter 1999
Germany: List, Spring 1999
Netherlands: Ambo/Anthos, Fall 1998
Japan: DHC Corporation
French Canada: Boreal
Czech Republic: Talpress
Romania: Nemira
(Photo: Jerry Bauer)
Time Out New York selected Kerri Sakamoto, as one of six novelists among 99 People to Watch in 1999. In October 1997 The New York Post described her first novel The Electrical Field as “the most sought-after book of the season”. Kerri Sakamoto is a Toronto-born writer of fiction, film scripts and visual-arts criticism. In 1999 she spent three months working on One Hundred Million Hearts in Japan as a guest of The Japan Foundation.
by Kerri Sakamoto
A MASTERFUL AND ELEGANT STORY OF PASSION, MEMORY AND REGRET, THE ELECTRICAL FIELD REACHES DEEP INTO THE PAST, AND INTO OUR COMMUNAL RESPONSE TO WAR
- Winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book
- Shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award
- Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award
- Shorlisted for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
- A 1998 Toronto Globe and Mail Notable Book of the Year
- Nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
When the beautiful Chisako and her lover are found murdered in a park in the 1970s, members of a small Ontario suburb must finally acknowledge certain inescapable truths about each other and the way their community has been shaped by the dark shadow of World War II internment camps.
With all the suspense of a psychological thriller, The Electrical Field slowly exposes all those implicated in the murders—particularly Miss Saito, the novel's unreliable narrator, through whom we gradually discover the truth. Miss Saito, middle-aged, caring for her elderly bed-ridden father and her distracted 
younger brother, on the surface seems to be a passive observer. But her own disturbed past and her craving for an emotional connection will prove to have profound consequences
Kerri Sakamoto invokes a Japanese sense of the relativity of memory and the reliability of consciousness.
PRAISE FOR THE ELECTRICAL FIELD
“In this disturbing first novel, the prose is spare, the mood eerie.... Kerri Sakamoto’s restrained narrative generates extraordinary tension, making this heartbreaking book a mesmerizing tour de force.” — THE WASHINGTON POST
“[A] poetic, lushly written account of psychologically twisted lives caught up in the wake of a hidden history.... Sakamoto has written the most important Asian-American novel to come along in years.” — SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN
“Miss Saito is a powerful creation, a twisted mixture of repression and yearning, competence and pettiness. Sakamoto makes her convincing and finally sympathetic, though never completely reliable. Using her to narrate the events surrounding a murder is a balancing act, a feat that marks Sakamoto as a writer to watch and makes this dark, layered novel difficult to forget.” — CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“America’s inexhaustible supply of good writing has turned out another impressive debut in Kerri Sakamoto’s new novel.... For those who like their books to have that subtle, Peter Hoeg feel, here is a burning, enigmatic addition to the genre.” — THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, UK
“A beautifully written first novel about a woman’s awakening.” — THE TIMES, UK
“Kerri Sakamoto has achieved a dazzling portrait of the disturbed mind.” — THE LITERARY REVIEW, UK
“A highly readable and accomplished novel.” — THE EVENING STANDARD, UK