A Girl Named Tamiko

A Girl Named Tamiko by Ronald Kirkbride.  This is a case where the movie version is better than the book. Ivan Balin is a man without a country. Born in China, his father was Russian, his mother Chinese; he escaped to Japan when the communist took control of China. He works as a photographer, but dreams of immigrating to America. A racist, he hates the Japanese, and the Americans will have little to do with him. Then the world collapses around him when he meets Tamiko, a Japanese woman of high society, who sees through his racial hatred. Although a pretty good story, it doesn’t come close to The World of Susie Wong, and in truth, the 1962 movie version starring Lawrence Harvey and France Nuyen was much better than the book.