Yōko Tawada Books

The 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 overwhelms him.[Bokinfo].

"Tawada's slender accounts of alienation achieve a remarkable potency."--Michael Porter, The New York Times

A dreamlike story of filial love and glimmering hope, set in a future where the old live almost-forever and children's lives are all too brief.

A tale of passion and romance between a Japanese schoolteacher and a doglike man, from the prize-winning author of The Last Children of Tokyo Mitsuko, a schoolteacher at the Kitamura school, inspires both rumour and curiosity in the parents of her students because of her unconventional manner - not least when she tells the children the fable of a princess whose hand in marriage is promised to a dog she is intimate with. And when a young man with sharp canine teeth turns up at the schoolteacher's home and declares he's 'here to stay', the romantic - and sexual - relationship that develops intrigues the community, some of whom have suspicions about the man's identity and motives. Masterfully turning the rules of folklore and fable on their head, The Bridegroom Was a Dog is a disarming and unforgettable modern classic.

Three generations (grandmother, mother, son) of polar bears are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany. They are polar bears who move in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world. In chapter one, the grandmother matriarch in the Soviet Union accidentally writes a best-selling autobiography. In chapter two, Tosca, her daughter (born in Canada, where her mother had emigrated) moves to the DDR and takes a job in the circus. Her son - the last of their line - is Knut, born in chapter three in a Leipzig zoo, but raised by a human keeper in relatively happy circumstances in the Berlin zoo, until his keeper, Matthias, is taken away.Happy or sad, each bear writes a story, enjoying both celebrity and "the intimacy of being alone with my pen."

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.

Yoko Tawada-winner of the National Book Award-presents three terrific new ghost stories, each named after a street in Berlin

Bilder auf transparenten Zwischenblättern, edichte auf farbiger Fläche