Hosted by Eliza from Lost City Books, Earth Reads will explore how to live through late-capitalist global climate catastrophe from a radical lens, and how to dream new ways of being on this planet. Next up is Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth!
About Scattered All Over the Earth:
A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian new novel by Yoko Tawada, winner of the National Book Award.
Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as “the land of sushi.” Hiruko, its 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. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language.”
As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they’re all next off to Stockholm.
With its intrepid band of companions, Scattered All Over the Earth (the first novel of a trilogy) may bring to mind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or a surreal Wind in the Willows, but really is just another sui generis Yoko Tawada masterwork.
This book club will be hosted via ZOOM, a video conferencing app for computers and phones. Open to all -- please just rsvp with a ticket for access to the ZOOM meeting. You can also purchase a copy of the book here which will give you:
a copy of Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth
access to the guided ZOOM discussion with our host, Eliza, from Lost City Books
*** We ask that participants be aware that you will need to download the ZOOM app to join the meeting. Within ZOOM, your camera's audio will pull your video to center-screen so it is advisable to set up in a quiet area. Additionally we ask that participants be courteous and take turns speaking/remain aware of your floor time so that everyone can get the most out of the book club experience.