Ambitious in scope and spanning decades, Yuko Tsushima’s 2013 “Wildcat Dome” uses an unreliable, shifting perspective to represent the instability of historical narrative.

Published last month in English translation by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, the novel centers on the mixed-race orphans of American soldiers, — children who were abandoned during the U.S. military occupation of Japan (1945-52), ostracized from Japanese society and raised in segregated orphanages such as the real-life Elizabeth Saunders Home (though the book features a fictional orphanage).

Wildcat Dome, by Yuko Tsushima. Translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda. 272 pages, MACMILLAN, fiction.