Scattered All Over the Earth

Yoko Tawada, the author of Scattered All Over the Earth, is a renowned Japanese author with a unique career. Tawada was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1960, but since the early 1980s has lived in Germany. Her time in both Japan and Germany has led her to explore literature in both languages. Tawada’s time in Europe and ability to write in multiple languages greatly influences her work, as can be seen in Scattered All Over the Earth, as the novel takes place all over the continent and features those who speak different languages getting to know each other throughout their journey. As an exophonic writer—one who writes outside of her native language—Tawada explores the complex relationships between language and identity, and she is particularly interested in the new forms of meaning that arise as languages shift into new cultural contexts. Many of Tawada’s works are also defined by their speculative nature, with Scattered All Over the Earth exploring a world in which Japan has disappeared. Similarly, her work The Emissary, explores Japan in the aftermath of a gigantic disaster that changes the face of the nation and its culture. In this novel, children are born weak, to the point in which they cannot walk, shifting the burden of caregiving and working to the elderly.