About the Book
I am trying to learn, with my tongue, sounds that are unfamiliar to me. A foreign-sounding word learned out of curiosity is not “imitation” per se. All of these things I learn leave traces that slowly grow to coexist with my accent. And that balancing act goes on changing indefinitely.
How perfect that Yoko Tawada’s first essay in English dives deep into her lifelong fascination with the possibilities opened up by cross-hybridizing languages.
Tawada famously writes in both Japanese and German, but her interest in language reaches beyond any mere dichotomy. The term “exophonic,” which she first heard in Senegal, has a special allure for the author: “I was already familiar with similar terms, 'immigrant literature,’ or ‘creole literature,’ but ‘exophonic’ had a much broader meaning, referring to the general experience of existing outside of one’s mother tongue.”
Tawada revels in explorations of cross-cultural and intra-language possibilities (and along the way deals several nice sharp raps to the primacy of English). The accent here, as in her fiction, is the art of drawing closer to the world through defamiliarization. Never entertaining a received thought, Tawada seeks the still-to-be-discovered truths, as well as what might possibly be invented entirely whole cloth. Exophony opens a new vista into Yoko Tawada’s world, and delivers more of her signature erudite wit—at once cross-grained and generous, laser-focused and multidimensional, slyly ironic and warmly companionable.
About the Author :
Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German, and has published several books—stories, novels, poems, plays, essays—in both languages. She has received numerous awards for her writing including the Akutagawa Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Goethe Medal, and the National Book Award. New Directions publishes her story collections Where Europe Begins (with a Preface by Wim Wenders) and Facing the Bridge, as well her novels The Naked Eye, The Bridegroom Was a Dog, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, The Emissary, Scattered All over the Earth, Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel, Suggested in the Stars, and forthcoming in autumn 2025 is Archipelago of the Sun, the final novel in her Scattered trilogy.
Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda is a literary translator. Born in Tokyo, raised in Texas, she currently resides in New York City.
Review :
"Tawada’s strange, exquisite book toys with ideas of language, identity, and what it means to own someone else’s story or one’s own."
"Magnificently strange. Tawada is reminiscent of Nikolai Gogol, for whom the natural situation for a ghost story was a minor government employee saving up to buy a fancy coat, the natural destiny of a nose to haunt its owner as an overbearing nobleman."
"A polyglot’s travelogue, steeped in the joys and peculiarities of exploring a foreign language."
"The beauty of Tawada’s work is that she treats the uncertain footing of the second language learner—and of the native speaker looking back on their first language with new eyes—not as a source of anxiety, but as a source of boundless creative potential."
"Tawada explores the fertile ground of intermingled languages in this scintillating essay collection. Playful and erudite, these essays offer valuable insights into Tawada’s own writing and her readings of classic world literature."
"National Book Award–winning Tawada’s enigmatic essay collection—her first in English translation—arrives meticulously enabled by Hofmann-Kuroda, who impressively renders Tawada’s inventive linguistic acrobatics. For audiences familiar with Tawada’s recent novels, Exophony is an ideal complement, illuminating, exploring, and experiencing ‘the space between languages…the poetic ravine between them.'"
"Exophony, of course, offers no answers to the condition of writing outside one’s mother tongue…. Rather, Tawada collects luminous tales and tidbits: lanternfish illuminating unexplored depths."
"In its collisions of anecdote, history, and linguistic inquiry, Exophony advances a quietly radical theory of literature. Tawada’s essays unfold like tidepools—shallow at first glance, but teeming with unpredictable life."
