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Exophony

Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue
By Yoko Tawada
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Brief Description
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 The New Yorker on Tawada's Memoirs of a Polar Bear. Are you formed by your mother tongue? How might the world unfold if you... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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Yoko Tawada's first book of essays in English, both a brilliant exploration of language and its relationship to power, colonialism and history and an introduction to an electrifying new side of the National Book Award Winner

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

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 The New Yorker on Tawada's Memoirs of a Polar Bear.

Are you formed by your mother tongue?

How might the world unfold if you stepped outside of its rhythms?

In this playful and daring interrogation of language, the globally acclaimed Yoko Tawada reveals the poetics, politics and potential of existing outside one's mother tongue. From Senegalese writers discarding colonial-enforced French to the increasing use of loan words in her native Japanese, Tawada deconstructs the ways in which the world shapes and is shaped by languages: their hidden systems of power, their sweeping histories and, ultimately, the people who claim, reject, adapt or romanticise them.

Exophony is an invitation to revel in the possibilities that emerge when we dare to seek beyond the familiar - and a sharp, incisive series of essays in which Tawada's erudite wit and multidimensional curiosity sing.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780349704197

Publisher: John Murray Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 24 July 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Dialogue Books

Contributors:

  • Translated by Priscilla Layne

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 135.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 199g

Pages: 192

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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.

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