Nina Revoyr is a writer who distrusts words. In place of an epigraph, she bestows upon her novel a Nietzschean epitaph: That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. She celebrates silent films, eschewing “talkies.” She creates a protagonist, Jun Nakayama, who is rendered inarticulate at every emotional peak in his life: confronted with racism, oblivion, love, even joy, he says nothing much at all. Years later he excuses himself: “Words would have diminished what I felt.”

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—Darcie Dennigan