Scattered All Over The Earth Av Yoko Tawada

<p><b>*From the author of </b><b><i>The Last Children of Tokyo</i></b><b>*</b><br><br><b>A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian novel about friendship, difference and what it means to belong, by a National Book Award-winning novelist.<br></b><br>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'.<br><br>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, <i>Scattered All Over the Earth </i>is another sui generis masterwork by Yoko Tawada.</p>