Soldiers in Hiding

It's Tokyo, 1941. Teddy Maki and Jimmy Yakamoto are Japanese-American friends and jazz musicians playing Tokyo"s lively nightclub scene. Stranded in Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Teddy and Jimmy are drafted into the Japanese army and sent to fight against American troops in the Philippines. Their perilous attempts to remain neutral in a conflict where their loyalties are deeply divided are shattered when Jimmy is killed by the commanding officer for refusing to shoot an American prisoner. The deed then falls to Teddy. Thirty years later, Teddy is married to Jimmy's widow, father to his son, a star on Japanese TV—and still wrestling with the guilt over Jimmy's death.

Winner of the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award for Best American Fiction, Soldiers in Hiding is a haunting portrayal of war's lingering emotional burdens. This revised edition features a new preface by the author and an introduction by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka.Winner of the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award for Best American Fiction

"A rich and ingenious novel that succeeds brilliantly." —The New York Times

"Wonderful . . . Original . . . Terrific . . . Haunting . . . Reading Soldiers in Hiding is like watching a man on a high wire." —Los Angeles Times

"Intelligent and interesting . . . daring and entirely convincing." —The Washington Post

"Extraordinary . . . A feat of the imagination rendered with surprising skill . . . you’ll remember this book for a long time." —Chicago Sun-Times

"Superb . . . First-rate . . . Ingeniously plotted with surprising twists and turns that continually move the story in unexpected directions." —The Seattle Times

"Satisfying . . . Draws the reader into a combination of surprising plot turns and richly textured characters." —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Richly imagined and wonderfully written . . . Richard Wiley is a first-rate talent." —Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Admirable, smooth, dispassionate . . . for an American to write from a Japanese standpoint, regardless of how long he has studied their culture, is an act of extreme literary bravery." —The Christian Science Monitor

"A work of exceptional power and imagination." —Publishers Weekly

"A mature novel . . . the spirit of Graham Greene is here." —Kirkus Reviews
RICHARD WILEY won the 1987 PEN/Faulkner Award for Best American Fiction for Soldiers in Hiding, his first novel. He has lived and taught in Korea, Japan, Kenya, and Nigeria, and is the author of Fools’ Gold, Festival for Three Thousand Maidens, Indigo, and Ahmed’s Revenge. He is currently a professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Mr. Wiley is also on the executive board of the North American Network of Cities of Asylum.