Translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani. Yoko Tawada is unique and this is probably the first book I truly enjoyed reading in 2022. As many already know, she writes her fiction in both Japanese and German. In a note by translator Susan Bernofsky who translated her previous novel, it was said that The Naked Eye, was started first in German, moved into Japanese, and then came back to German. Previously, she attempted to only write only in either Japanese or German as she approached her writings but she found herself moving back and forth in both languages in her creative process in writing The Naked Eye. And as in The Naked Eye, language is also central to the plots and developments in this story, and I’m sure many people trained in linguistics would be able to appreciate the richness and philosophical nature of Yoko Tawada’s latest novel with regard to language.

Scattered All Over the Earth takes its central plot in the discovery of one’s identity, as nations disappeared in an imagined future. Does the concept of nationalities still exist when nations disappeared? A few pages into the story, we get introduced to our Danish linguist, Knut, as he watches a TV show featuring people who were born in countries that no longer exist. The first one on the show was a political linguist born in the German Democratic Republic who following German reunification felt as though she became an immigrant in her own country even though she hasn’t moved an inch from the place where she spent her time until then, followed by a woman from the former Soviet Union and a few others. But it was the last person featured on the show that catches Knut’s interest, Hiruko.

Hiruko is described throughout the story as someone born in “the land of sushi” which disappeared following the rising sea level caused by climate change. She has been living in Scandinavia since. Asked by the commentator, Hiruko said of the language she speaks, “homemade language. no time to learn three different languages. might mix up. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language most scandinavian people understand.” She calls her homemade language Panska. “I stuck the ‘ska’ of Scandinavia on the end of “pan”, which means universal. There’s a kind of ethnic folk dance in Sweden called the polska, which sounds like it should be from Poland though it’s actually Scandinavian in origin. I’m hoping my name for this language I’ve invented has the same sort of strangeness,” as she explains the meaning behind the name Panska.

The concept of Panska as a universal language throughout Scandinavia is unique but a sound one as we have seen more migrations in the past few years, sometimes migrations that happen against individual’s will such as those taking refuge in nearby European countries following the war in Ukraine. Refugees sometimes have to keep moving from one place to the next, only staying in one place temporarily before getting resettled. Hiruko considers her Panska as a good alternative for refugees coming to Scandinavia, so that they would not have to learn either Danish, Swedish or Norwegian, and instead, settle with the simpler Panska which is easy to learn but enough to be understood equally by the speakers of the three languages. I could only imagine the way the Panska is written in the original Japanese text of this novel and how the translation process is. But the way Panska is invented in the story pretty much sums up Yoko Tawada’s experience in language as she writes in both Japanese and German, moving back and forth with them.

My experience learning foreign languages is something similar to Hiruko. At first, taking one word after another, making simple sentences enough to get meaning across, hoping that someday my interaction with those languages would bring me close enough to the level of native speakers after prolonged use of them. In the story, Hiruko tries with the help of Knut to meet with Tenzo, a sushi maker who rumours said also originates from “the land of sushi” and currently resides in Trier. When she discovers that Tenzo is actually Nanook, an Eskimo who barely speaks any words of her mother tongue, she wasn’t disappointed and instead thinks, “In fact, the whole idea of a mother tongue no longer seemed to matter; this meeting between two unique speaking beings was far more important.” I can agree with Hiruko’s point of view. Language barriers might be an issue when migrations occur, but language itself is not the only medium to get our meanings across. And perhaps besides conversing in languages that both sides understand, the fact that two individuals meet might be more meaningful. The attitude is more like, “meeting first, then you can take matriculations on language later on.”

Another interesting thing besides the Panska is the cast of characters which is international in its nature. Besides Hiruko who comes from “the land of sushi” and Knut the Danish linguist, we also have Akash the Indian immigrant, Tenzo or Nanook the Eskimo sushi maker, Nora the German girl who is Nanook’s lover, and Susanoo who also comes from “the land of sushi”. The international cast of the story brings about diversities with characters who are multi-lingual and multi-genders (for some). The way Yoko Tawada presents first-person points of view from each character also brings multiple points of view to suggest what each character thinks about each other. It’s the closest to what a Weltliteratur can truly be, as Goethe suggested two centuries ago on the capacity of literature to transcend national and linguistic boundaries.

Scattered All Over the Earth (by Yōko Tawada [translated by Margaret Mitsutani])

In the not too distant future Japan has been submerged by the rising waters caused by the melting ice caps. Its population has been disbursed throughout the word and its language has all but been forgotten. Hiruko, who is a language teacher in Denmark, still remembers her language and she sets out on a quest to find another person who can speak her mother tongue. Along the way she gathers an unlikely group of fellow travellers, and she meets many strange characters before she finds what she is looking for.


When I read the synopsis for Scattered All Over the Earth I was instantly intrigued by the concept, and after reading quite a few Japanese authors over the last couple of years I thought Yoko Tawada might be an interesting author to try. Culture is interesting to me, and language is an important part of culture, so I thought the journey would be an interesting one. It also seemed from the synopsis I read that Tawada writes similarly to some of the other authors I have enjoyed, with less of an emphasis on plot and more on story or character.

Unfortunately when eschewing plot the author has to have characters who engage with the audience, and for me this is where the author failed. In general I think readers will get very different mileage from this book depending on whether they can associate with the characters or not. There’s little else going on. The writing is engaging and the locations are interesting, but if you can’t quite understand or sympathise with the characters a reader is on shaky ground, and this is where I found myself.

On the surface of it the characters are interesting, and immensely diverse. We have a mix of cultures and languages (of course) but we also have traditional values coexisting with very modern changes. In many ways Scattered All Over the Earth is an exaggerated macrocosm of the world in which we currently live. The problem I had with the characters wasn’t those things that made them different, but the things about them that made them the same - at least in my eyes - which was epitomised by what I saw as their shallow affect.

As strange as this might seem, Yoko Tawada’s Scattered All Over the Earth too often reads like American Psycho to me. There is a lot of talk of pop-culture and culture in general, there are musings on the fate of the world, but I never got the impression anyone actually cared about the things they were talking about. There was no urgency in their journey, no emotion in their arguments. I was left with the impression that I was witnessing academics speaking about academic things. There was lots of theory, lots and lots of ideas floating around the book, but few emotional entanglements, and even those were fleeting and left little mark.

I have no doubt at all that I missed a great deal in this book, but what I have taken from it is that I don’t think Yoko Tawada’s work is for me. I think if you like books that hover around more literary or more esoteric arguments, writing that centres on ideas rather than people, then this might be something for you. Perhaps - in fact - it might be something I would enjoy a great deal more at some other point in my own life. Maybe I’ll read it again in a year or so and find it “clicks”, and wonder to myself why I never saw what made it so good before.

Books are like that sometimes for me. Ultimately I found Scattered All Over the Earth a disappointing experience, but not because Yoko Tawada is a bad writer, she certainly isn’t, but rather because of my own expectations based on the synopsis I read of the work. I wanted an emotional tale and instead felt that I read an extended hypothesis instead, and I guess that's just not what I was looking for.

This book grapples with interesting ideas in, to me, a not particularly interesting way.

I was intrigued by the general idea, a future world in which Japan has disappeared and a Japanese woman is looking for a compatriot to speak her own language to. I’ve said before that recently I’ve read a number of “gentle dystopias” that haven’t exactly set my heart on fire, but what I liked here was that it wasn’t really a dystopia at all (unless, I suppose, you are Japanese), merely an intriguingly mundane future world.

And I felt the pursuit of a fellow native speaker had promise. I’ve lived abroad for years, and there have been times when all my English speaking friends seem to have moved away and yes, it erodes identity in a curious way, even as speaking another language adds something to who you are, it takes something away.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t charmed by Hiruko’s conclusions when she finally catches up with another Japanese man (and earlier, one who isn’t). <spoiler> An extremely pat comment about how speaking your own language isn’t nearly so important as communicating with the soul of another individual, and look, I’m married to someone who isn’t a native speaker of my language, so, duh, but in that case why don’t we all just speak English (or whatever), kill all the smaller languages, erase cultural specificity and … what a boring world. Unless there was a deeper irony that went over my head </spoiler>

I also found the novel frustrating on many other levels. It is narrated in turns by a group of largely-European young people. Never have a met a more tedious crowd. From Knut, a linguist, whose claim to fame seems to be that he smokes weed, to Akash, a transgender Indian with no personality whatsoever apart from having the hots for Knut, to Nora, a German woman with no personality whatever on any issue.

I think a lot of the problem is less the book than me, which is why I’m giving three stars. Tawada has a light, quirky, eccentric kind of style that I’ve discovered before doesn’t work for me. My husband described her previous book as “silly,” so perhaps it’s just us.

I can see how for somebody else this could be invigorating both in concept and execution but for me it fell flat.
Thank you to Netgalley and Granta (whose books I generally love) for an ARC.

2,5 stars
Maybe Yoko Tawada just isn't my cup of tea. I read 'Memoirs of a Polar Bear' a couple of years ago and wasn't very enthusiastic and I had trouble with this one as well. Don't get me wrong, I like her politics and weirdness. But I guess I just don't get her plots. Tawada addresses many different topics here, and all seem to be equally important. This novel is about prejudice, migration, politics, identity, home, belonging, language, art, food and taste, environmentalism, species becoming extinct, a world in crisis, terrorism, travel, robots, nuclear power plants, etc. For me, there were just too many things she wants to express, things that are often connected in a way I found confusing (human language and that of whales, that are endangered and hunted and eaten, referring to Eskimo’s and Norwegians who kill them and sushi that is eaten especially in Japan etc etc) making it unclear to me what the main point of the story really is. I think it would have worked better had there only be two or three chracaters (Hiruko, Knut and Nanook for instance) and only one main theme (like language/identity/belonging/home). I also had some trouble with the style, which can be quite explanatory, stating the obvious. For instance: “but this guy was so silent he might as well be mouthless. Of course he really did have a mouth, though. And teeth and a tongue.” So I guess, it's just me
Thank you Granta and Netgalley UK for the ARC, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

If your actual country disappears then what’s left of your national identity? Yoko Tawada’s new novel suggests it might be your language. More subversively, if your language is constantly evolving, then is your nationality not mutable too? Her central character, Hiroko, is left in Copenhagen as her home country Japan disappears through some catacylsmic ecological event. She teaches Panska - a home-made Scandinavian esperanto - to refugee children as a form of integration and therapy both for her charges and for her. Appearing on a TV programme for people whose countries have vanished, she meets amateur linguist Knut, and so a chain story emerges narrated in turn by a cast of characters including a transitioning Indian man and a native Greenlander with a passion for cooking sushi.

As we follow the adventure across Europe from Trier to Oslo, characters burst with passions for acquiring, practising, connecting with or deceiving through new languages. Subtly ideas such as ‘authenticity’ and ‘national heritage’ are teased apart, and the possibility of overcoming barriers put up fixed national and linguistic identities explored. It’s a light and elegant read, and refreshingly puts its dystopian events upfront and in the background as a starting point rather than an ending.

Absolutely loved this book! It took such an interesting concept and I believe fully executed it to the best result. The future that this novel depicts doesn’t seem so distant now that climate impacts are being felt globally, so I do think that is what had me flipping through the pages. At the end of the day though, it was less an apocalyptic take on what could be humanity’s future but more a consolation that communities can survive the aftermath.

A slow burn tale set in Western Europe where each of the chapters is narrated by one of the characters. As the story begins, each chapter is told by a character introduced in the previous - each character tells their backstory as well as their take on the action to date.

The story revolves around a lady called Hiruko from a far away land that may or may not have sunk under the sea - no-one quite knows and getting information is difficult. Hiruko would dearly like to meet someone who speaks her language but so far has had no luck. To survive, Hiruko has created her own language - Panska - to make herself intelligible in Scandinavia as she found learning all 3 Scandinavian languages challenging. The translation of these passages is impressive as it conveys both the otherness of Panska but also how understandable it is. Knut, the other central character, is a student of linguistics and finds the concept of someone creating their own language fascinating. After meeting Hiruko, the journeys across Europe begin in search of someone who speaks Hiruko's mother language.

An interesting read about language and belonging which has been well translated.

Speculative fiction is almost always not something I enjoy. I was hoping I would change my mind and love this but unfortunately I’m still not a fan of the genre. It’s a me problem, not the author.

Having largely enjoyed The Last Children of Tokyo I was curious about Yōko Tawada's latest novel in translation, and I loved the idea of the plot. This novel tackles similar themes but the plot was all over the place (too much going on but simultaneously incredibly slow moving), the characters were poorly developed and I didn't care for the writing. Not for me.

I always joke about linguistics being a dry hobby, but there is nothing dry about Scattered All Over the Earth. Even though it doesn't feel like complete fiction, it has a concrete theme and is very speculative, it's amazingly creative and a pleasure to read. The writing style is very specific, and took some time getting used to, but fits the story very well, and it's beautifully metaphorical. If you love language as much as I do, you're going to enjoy both the content of the writing and the writing itself. Also, there is a sneaky sort of humour to it, and I kept finding myself laughing at what I at first glance wouldn't have expected to be jokes.

The world in which this book takes place is fascinating. I love early 1900's dystopia that takes place in our present, because it feels like reading about an absurd version of reality, and that's what this book feels like. It's less futuristic, and more like a caricature of our current society, where all the weird aspects are slightly exaggerated. In the first chapter, for example, there's a sushi place where every dish is rated based on how much pain the fish felt when they died. That's amazing. Something that adds to that, I'd say, is how "Japan" is never mentioned, even though it's clear that Japan is Hiruko's vanished home country.. Instead it's "the land of sushi", or "Hiruko's native language", and it adds to the strange, speculative feeling, because we can't be entirely sure our assumption, that Hiruko is Japanese, is correct.

Scattered All Over the Earth is interestingly philosophical, with speculation around things like identity
and how we are perceived by others, prejudice (in a neutral way, not necessarily negative), migration, and, most importantly, how language is involved in all of that. My favorite aspect was that it was philosophical in such a cozy way, with the characters thinking silly little deep thoughts all the time in a way I found very realistically human. Additionally, the plot was more complex than I expected it to be as well, with how the characters know each other and are all tied together, and how that affects Knut's and Hiruko's journey around Europe on the hunt for more speakers of Hiruko's native language.

I have a few complaints, such as that I didn't feel connected to the characters as much as I would have liked, and that some plot aspects as well as the ending were a bit weird and confusing, but I did, after all, come for the linguistics, and based on what I was expecting, this truly was a wonderfully fascinating book!

At first, I was confused when the book ended so abruptly, but I am happy to discover that there will be other books after!
I really liked it - the concept, the execution. As a big fan of linguistics and sci-fi, this looked like a great book and I really liked it. Quite a lot of concepts were thrown in, including the use of words, identities and how people refer to others, archetypes, loss and some good surprises.
The world seems like a near future sci-fi but it's actually more like a parallel universe, where climate change has impacted the world even more than now. Hiruko, one of the main character is a climate refugee from Japan - Japan is mentioned in so many different ways, yet never mentioned even once, apart from the French word, Japon, as a sound and not a word, in one scene. Which, to me, screams Oulipo. (And after that I researched some papers about the author and the Oulipo (basically a group of artists writing with constraints) and found quite a few references.)
As Hiruko tries to find traces of her native language, she has also created a pan-Scandinavian language to communicate with people, and soon a stream of people follow her on her quest for varied reasons, including a love for linguistics, love for someone else, etc.
A lot of the events I found were quite heavy, but the author really tried to portray them neutrally, which isn't always working as she decided to write about them in the first place, and it can be a bit dissonant at time, probably because of my own expectations.
Overall I really enjoyed this book and would pick the next one.

I want to thank NetGalley and Granta Publications for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

The concept of this book is really good, linguistics and different people from different backgroubds and cultures is what made me invested on this. Unfortunately, the writing wasn't my cup of tea and this could be due to the translation.... I really enjoyed the first half. it got confusing and the difference between xharacterd was non existent for me.

A really interesting concept. I would be heartbroken to not have Japan on my bucket list. I'm inspired by the culture and cannot wait to visit.
The book is very compelling and well written, a thought provoking read which lands well.

A very interesting and enjoyable read. It could be a bit jarring if someone doesn't completely focus on the chapters of the book. The characters are well bult and the questions raised and the intellectual vibe coming out of it very nice.

oh my! I hope we never see such a day. A world without Japan? This is part of a trilogy and raises interesting questions about identity. Scattered All Over the Earth is narrated in the first person. This is a compelling and strange book that won't be everyone's cup of tea but for those it is, it will be a memorable one.

A short and quick read that is infused with folklore and myth. The writing was good and the charcaters were well developed.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review,

Sadly I DNF’d @ 10%

This book was sadly not my cup of tea. The writing, especially the dialogue, became confusing if you're not the kind of person who carefully reads over every line individually. At points it felt like the words were swimming on the page. I don't think it's a bad book at all, in fact I found the premise to be quite interesting, I just did not expect the writing to be so dense and flowery when I prefer a more straightforward and succinct prose. Maybe it went over my head and I couldn’t really grasp onto what it was supposed to be doing. I do however believe that people who enjoy a fast-paced and whimsical storytelling style will enjoy this novel. With the way the plot centres around the way language separates and also brings people together it felt intended for language and linguistics lovers. Even though this book was not for me, I do recommended it if languages are your niche and if you like a using language as a device to create a fun story. I cannot say much about the plot or characters since it was hard to immerse myself in the story, so I will leave out what little observations I had.

The first in a projected trilogy, Scattered All Over the Earth builds on themes that will be familiar to regular readers of Yoko Tawada’s fiction. Tawada’s famous for working in both Japanese and German, Germany having been her home for many years, but has settled on Japanese for this latest translated work. It’s short but dense and richly inventive with an unusual folkloric aspect: sometimes a little perplexing but always engrossing and thought-provoking. The novel unfolds from a variety of viewpoints but at its centre’s Hiruko who, like her namesake, is adrift in the world, ending up working as a storyteller in a Danish community centre. Hers is a world that’s both instantly recognisable, a 2011 in which Anders Breivik’s infamous terrorist attacks are just about to take place, but also strangely disorientating. In this version of reality, Hiruko’s homeland Japan no longer exists, even its name has vanished from memory, it’s now known only as the land of sushi.

Hiruko’s story revolves around her quest for someone who shares her mother tongue. As her search takes her across Northern Europe, she quickly accumulates an unlikely entourage: Danish Knut who’s a linguistics scholar of sorts; Nora a curator from Trier’s Marx Museum and her erstwhile lover Nanook who hails from Greenland but has reinvented himself as “Japanese” Tenzo; and Akash an Indian, trans woman who joins them on their travels. Chapters move between their voices - the emphasis on voices is deliberate and significant, Tawada privileges the oral with its immediacy and flexibility over the limits and constraints of the written word.

The characters’ narratives intertwine, intersecting with Knut’s mother whose existence’s structured around her need to rescue and sponsor young people from Denmark’s former colonies. Through this disparate group, Tawada teases out a multiplicity of interconnected themes, often returning to her long-standing preoccupations with environmentalism and the damaging implications of nationalistic policies; alongside her fascination with communication, language and identity, and the possibilities for new forms of selfhood opened up by nomadic individuals. All of which echo aspects of her earlier work especially Memoirs of a Polar Bear and Where Europe Begins.

Tawada’s characters’ experiences highlight the transformational potential of transnational identities, forming a strong plea for casting off the constrictions of nationalist longings. Hiruko’s created her own language Panska incorporating words and phrases from numerous Scandinavian countries, giving her an enviable freedom both in her encounters and her ability to represent the world around her. Her polyglot style allows her to move beyond the limits of her cultural underpinnings. Instead, she’s able to mix and match aspects of her past and present, using folklore and fairy tales from her childhood that she reinvents for new audiences of migrant children.

The nature of Tawada’s interests may make this sound potentially dry and overly academic, and there are moments when that seems likely but the book’s rescued by her creative approach and vivid style; while her prose’s laden with memorable phrases and evocative descriptions, bringing in musings on a wonderfully-eccentric range of topics from the Moomins, to lost civilisations to Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Tawada uses Hiruko’s group to explore and question established or conventional notions of race or gender binaries that often go hand in hand with a stifling fixation on national origins and a stubborn refusal to let go of divisive myths of linguistic and cultural purity. It’s a timely, fertile story and I’m looking forward to finding out where future instalments will take me. Translated here by Margaret Mitsutani.