Proof that thoughtful novels of ideas can be fun as well as provocative.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred)
In the concluding volume of her enormously popular and cheerfully dystopian trilogy, Yoko Tawada’s intrepid young band of friends strike out in search of the lost Land of Sushi
Archipelago of the Sun finds Hiruko still searching for her lost country, traveling around the Baltic on a mail boat. With her are Knut, a Danish linguist; Akash, an Indian in the process of moving to the opposite sex; Nanook, a Greenlander who once worked as a sushi chef; Nora, the German woman who loves Nanook but is equally concerned with social justice and the environment; and Susanoo, a former sushi chef who believes he is responsible for the entire group. But weren’t they originally supposed to sail to Cape Town, and then on to India? Puzzled by this sudden change in route, which no one seems to remember anything about, they encounter long dead writers (Witold Gombrowicz, Hella Wuolijoki) on board, plus a cast of characters from literature, art, and myth. As the very existence of Hiruko and Susanoo’s homeland is called into question, Susanoo meets the mythical princess he will marry, and Hiruko tells the others that she will now be a house in which everyone can live. Though the trilogy comes to its end, their journey seems likely to continue.
Proof that thoughtful novels of ideas can be fun as well as provocative.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred)
Yoko Tawada conjures a world between languages … She is a master of subtraction, whose characters often find themselves stripped of language in foreign worlds.
— Julian Lucas, The New Yorker
Tawada is immune to the seduction of ideal worlds. Even when speculative, her fiction still manages to operate in the world that we actually inhabit: one characterized by slippages, ambiguity, and a history of territorial entanglements that began long before twentieth-century globalism—entanglements that, in fact, go back so far that they might be one of the few things coterminous with being human.
— Reed McConnell, The Baffler
Tawada again proffers linguistic illuminations.
— Terry Hong, Booklist
Consider this a recommendation for the whole series, frankly. Its three slim books craft a winningly genial kind of dystopia, bleak and earnest in equal measure.
— Colin Dwyer, NPR
A strange, meandering, but compelling tale that combines pin-sharp interpersonal observations with an ambiguous, blurry backdrop.
