*From the author of The Last Children of Tokyo*
A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian novel about friendship, difference and what it means to belong, by a National Book Award-winning novelist.
Welcome to the not-too-distant future. Japan, having vanished into the sea, is now remembered as 'the land of sushi'. Hiruko, a former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian): 'homemade language. no country to stay in. three countries I experienced. no time to learn three different languages. might mix up. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language most Scandinavian people understand'.
Hiruko soon makes new friends to join her in her travels searching for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue: Knut, a graduate student in linguistics, who is fascinated by her Panska; Akash, an Indian man who lives as a woman, wearing a red sari; Nanook, an Eskimo from Greenland, first mistaken as another refugee from the land of sushi; and Nora, who works at the Karl Marx House in Trier. All these characters take turns narrating chapters, which feature an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra- nationalist named Breivik; Kakuzo robots; uranium; and an Andalusian bull fight. Episodic, vividly imagined and mesmerising, Scattered All Over the Earth is another sui generis masterwork by Yoko Tawada.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
Tawada writes beautifully about unbearable things -- Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither Magnificently strange -- RIVKA GALCHEN * NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE * Every Yoko Tawada novel pulls the ground out from under us, but gives us new senses in return. Scattered All Over the Earth, a novel of created, found, remembered and possible languages - of what lies at the very heart of listening - is that rare work of art: something entirely new in the world -- Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing Tawada writes lightly about serious matters in this memorable, magical tale -- Books of the Month * Guardian * Tawada has certainly achieved the goal of highlighting the arbitrariness or even meaninglessness of borders, nations and fixed identities, and of holding up the inequalities of western immigration policies to scrutiny. The craftmanship of Scattered All Over the Earth is impeccable and every bit as inventive as fans of Yoko Tawada's work have come to expect * TLS *
Auflage
Sprache
Verlagsort
Maße
Höhe: 195 mm
Breite: 127 mm
Dicke: 15 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-78378-912-2 (9781783789122)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
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 the Akutagawa, Lessing, Kleist, Noma, Adelbert von Chamisso and Tanizaki prizes as well as the Goethe Medal. In 2018 her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award.
MARGARET MITSUTANI is a translator of Yoko Tawada and Kenzaburo Oe (Japan's 1994 Nobel Prize laureate).
