Scattered All Over the Earth
As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they're all next off to Stockholm.
With its intrepid band of companions, Scattered All Over the Earth (the first novel of a trilogy) may bring to mind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or a surreal Wind in the Willows, but really is just another sui generis Yoko Tawada masterwork.
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Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German and has received numerous awards, including the Tanizaki Prize and the Goethe Medal. In 2018 her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award.
MARGARET MITSUTANI has also translated Japan's 1994 Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburo Oe.
Tawada's strange, exquisite book toys with ideas of language, identity, and what it means to own someone else's story or one's own.-- "The New Yorker"
Tawada's stories agitate the mind like songs half remembered or treasure boxes whose keys are locked within.-- "The New York Times"
Wonderful--what is truly affecting is Tawada's language, which jumps off the page and practically sings.--Juan Vidal "NPR"
Threats abound--a changing climate, terrorism, and hostile political structures create danger and uncertainty--but these characters carry within themselves the seeds of a possible new world. Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth is a cheerful dystopian novel that celebrates inventiveness, possibilities, and human connections.-- "Foreword Reviews"
Tawada expands upon the themes of language, immigration, globalization, and authenticity which underpin this slyly humorous first installment of a planned trilogy.-- "Kirkus, Starred Review"
Tawada slyly interrogates shifting (disappearing) borders and populations, native (invented) identities, assumptions, and adaptations. Her most frequent translator, Mitsutani, brilliantly ciphers Tawada's magnificently inventive wordplay.-- "Booklist"
