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.
— Rhoda Feng, Foreign Policy
An electrifying new side of the National Book Award Winner Yoko Tawada: her first book of essays in English
Yoko Tawada's first essay collection in English presents and electrifying new side of the National Book Award-winner as she dives deep into her lifelong fascination with cross-hybridizing languages. The accent here, as in her fiction, is on the art of drawing closer to the world through defamiliarization. Tawada famously writes in both Japanese and German, but her interest in language reached 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." 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.
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.
— Rhoda Feng, Foreign Policy
In these deft essays, Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German, wanders through cities and languages, treating every border crossing as an adventure.
— The New Yorker
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.’
— Terry Hong, Booklist
Tawada asks what it means to exist outside of one’s mother tongue—whether we can truly hear something using languages or ideas that are received and ready-made. Holding uncertainties, held by uncertainties, the languages Tawada seeks are not ones she wishes to command so much as to be changed by.
— Declan Fry, Kill Your Darlings
A polyglot's travelogue, steeped in the joys and peculiarities of exploring a foreign language.
— Kirkus Reviews
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.
— Publishers Weekly
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.
— Newcity Lit
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.
— Reed McConnell, The Baffler
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 over-bearing nobleman.
— Rivka Galchen, New York Times Magazine
Tawada is, far and away, one of my favorite writers working today: thrilling, discomforting, uncannily beautiful, like no one you have ever read before.
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