Scattered All Over the Earth

As a work of speculative fiction, Scattered All Over the Earth imagines a future formed from the implications of the present. It explores a world that continues to struggle with the forces of climate change, and particularly, with the cultural change brought about by climate-driven migration. Technology and migration shrink the world and bring cultures closer together, making Europe a place of cultural ferment in which new and hybrid traditions are constantly being born. At the same time, cultures do not always meet on an equal footing, and the pressure to assimilate can cause traditions, identities, and even languages to disappear. The most potent symbol of this fear of erasure is the “land of sushi.” Though numerous cues make clear that this vanished nation is Japan, neither Japan nor the Japanese language is ever mentioned by name in the book—as if the nation has disappeared so completely that even its name has been erased from existence. Hiruko spends her life hoping to find someone else who comes from this land so that she can speak her native language before it, too, disappears.

This notion of erasure is also explored when