Book Review: Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada translated by Margaret Mitsutani

´No. I´m not a Buddhist. I´m a linguist.´

´Is that a religion?´

A dystopian novel set in a world where Japan disappeared as the effect of climate change, Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada, translated from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani is a quest for understanding authenticity in a dislocated realm.

´When the original no longer exists (...) there´s nothing you can do except look for the best copy´.

The characters of the book, that are each and one of them are contributing to the story, their voices being shared through short installments revealing parts of the narrative, do connect through dying languages. They move back and forth within the Nordic countries, Germany and France, one of them even invented a language ´Panska´ a common language for all the Scandinavian countries, aimed to help people on the move to communicate. Another character is assuming an Asian role - as a Sushi chef, among others - although an Eskimo, but impersonation would only destroy the dreams and expectations the society made about him.

The sci-fi part is relatively mild, therefore not a challenge for readers like me, not necessarily interested in imagining future worlds, but nevertheless it does creatively extract topics from a big array of areas, like robotics, AI, challenges of climate change and the impact of languages to personality and human development in general.

As usual, Japan-born, Berlin-based author Yoko Tawada challenges the reader to think about language and its role in the everydaylife as well as the distortions occuring through social and political interactions. Scattered All Over the Earth, shortlisted for 2022 National Book Award has the charm of fantastic fairy tales and the tone of emergency of policy reports. An uneven encounter that may also happen in the pages of a book. 

Rating: 4 stars