A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian tale about friendship, difference and what it means to belong, from National Book Award–winning author Yoko Tawada.

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).

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; Akash, an Indian man who lives as a woman; 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.