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  • Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada book cover
  • Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada book cover
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Scattered All Over the Earth

by Yoko Tawada

Language, displacement, and a vanished homeland

$15.83 USD
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AlbakiReads Editorial

Language, displacement, and a vanished homeland

In a near-future setting where Japan has disappeared, Hiruko—a former citizen and climate refugee—teaches immigrant children in Denmark using Panska, a language she has made herself. Her search for someone who still speaks her mother tongue becomes a journey with new companions across Europe. The publisher description points to an episodic novel that brings together migration, language-making, cultural memory, and a changing sense of home, with encounters ranging from an umami cooking competition to a dead whale. This is the first novel in a trilogy.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • For readers interested in fiction about migration and displacement.
  • For readers drawn to language, cultural memory, and imagined futures.
  • For readers who enjoy episodic journeys with an ensemble of companions.

Themes

Migration and climate displacementLanguage and communicationCultural memory and identityHome and belonging

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its 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. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language."

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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