Exophony

Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

Yoko Tawada, Priscilla Layne

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English

Dial House
01 August 2025

Literacy; Literature, Poetry & Criticism; Literary essays

'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.

By: Yoko Tawada
Translated by: Priscilla Layne
Imprint: Dial House
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 214mm, Width: 134mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 199g
ISBN: 9780349704197
ISBN 10: 0349704198
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 01 August 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

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.

Reviews for Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

A polyglot's travelogue, steeped in the joys and peculiarities of exploring a foreign language . . . [Exophony is] a playful journey toward the space between languages. * Kirkus Reviews * 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 * 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 * Originally published in Japan in 2003, 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 *