Author of the Month: Yoko Tawada
Selected by the Bookshop
Our first Author of the Month for 2025 is the Japanese poet and novelist Yoko Tawada.
Born in Tokyo in 1960, Tawada moved to Germany at the age of 22, and now writes in both Japanese and German, sometimes simultaneously. Language and exile are recurrent themes in her work: in The Last Children of Tokyo Japan has cut itself off from the world following an ecological catastrophe. In her ongoing trilogy ‘Scattered All Over the Earth’, the first two parts of which have appeared in English as Scattered All Over the Earth and Suggested in the Stars, Japan has mysteriously ceased to exist, leaving its exiled central character Hiroko searching for anyone with whom to communicate in her native tongue, and to invent a new language of her own. ‘Every Yoko Tawada novel pulls the ground out from under us, but gives us new senses in return,’ wrote Madeleine Thien. ‘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.’
From the publisher:
Translated by Margaret MitsutaniFrom the author of The Last Children of TokyoA mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian novel about friendship, difference and what it means to belong, by a National Book Award-winning novelist.Welcome to…
From the publisher:
Translated by Margaret MitsutaniThe magical sequel to Scattered All Over the Earth, from the prize-winning Japanese author.Hiruko, from the now vanished archipelago 'somewhere between China and Polynesia', and her companions have searched…
From the publisher:
Translated by Margaret MitsutaniA tale of passion and romance between a Japanese schoolteacher and a doglike man, from the prize-winning author of The Last Children of TokyoA tale of passion and romance between a Japanese schoolteacher and…
From the publisher:
Translated by Margaret MitsutaniIn a near-future where the old live almost-forever and the rest die young, an elderly man fights to keep his beloved great-grandson aliveYoshiro thinks he might never die. A hundred years old and…
From the publisher:
Translated by Susan BernofskyThe highly anticipated, exquisite new novel from the award-winning, critically acclaimed Yoko Tawada, following our protagonist Patrik as he attempts to find connection in a world that constantly…
From the publisher:
Translated by Susan BernofskyA trip into the unique imagination of one of Japan's most celebrated writersThree bears. The first, a diligent memoirist whose unlikely success forces her to flee Soviet Russia. The second, her daughter, a…
From the publisher:
Translated by Margaret MitsutaniYoko Tawada—winner of the National Book Award—presents three terrific new ghost stories, each named after a street in BerlinThe always astonishing Yoko Tawada here takes a walk on the…
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