World Literature: Yoko Tawada (Japan,Germany) “Suggested in the Stars”

Delivering poignant and shambolic exploits, Yoko Tawada’s Suggested in the Stars is the much-anticipated sequel to Scattered All Over the Earth. In this reading and discussion, Yoko lights up the Alphabet City stage and guides us through this second installment in her Scattered series. Suggested in the Stars delivers new delights, following Hiruko and her friends on a “strange, exquisite” (The New Yorker) trip you hope will never end.

As Hiruko—whose Land of Sushi has vanished into the sea and who is still searching for someone who speaks her mother tongue—and her new friends travel onward, they begin opening up to one another in new and extraordinary ways. They try to help their friend Susanoo regain his voice, and amid many often hilarious misunderstandings (some linguistic in nature), they empower each other against despair. Coping with carbon footprint worries, Hiruko and her friends hitchhike, take late-night motorcycle rides, and hop on the train (learning about railway strikes but also packed-train yoga) to convene in Copenhagen. There, they find Susanoo in a strange hospital working with a scary speech-loss doctor. In the half-basement of this weird medical center, they also find two special kids washing dishes. They discover magic radios, personality swaps, ship tickets delivered by a robot, and other gifts. But friendship—loaning one another the nerve and heart to keep going—sets them all (and the reader) to dreaming of something more. 

You can purchase your own copy of Yoko’s book, Suggested in the Stars, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was 22, 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 published her story collections Where Europe Begins (with a Preface by Wim Wenders) and Facing the Bridge, as well her novels _The Naked Ey_e, 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, Archipelago of the Sun, the final novel in her Scattered trilogy.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant Cucina Alfabeto is closed on Sundays and Mondays, but a cash wine bar will be available.