Power of language to shape identity

Top Of The Stack

1. FICTION

SCATTERED ALL OVER THE EARTH

Japan ceases to exist in a not-so-distant future dreamt up by award-winning writer Yoko Tawada, who this time goes one step further than in her previous novel, The Last Children Of Tokyo (2018), when she made the capital so polluted that it has become uninhabitable.

In Scattered All Over The Earth, the entire archipelago has mysteriously sunk into the ocean in an unspecified disaster, though the dystopian setting does not give rise to a parable about climate change.

Instead, Tawada puts a rather buoyant spin in her focus on one refugee's hopeful quest to find a compatriot with whom she can once more converse in Japanese, a language that has become critically endangered.

The protagonist, Hiruko, is a citizen of nowhere - passport renewal is impossible because Japan has vanished, known reductively only as the "land of sushi" with the dish exoticised to the point of kitsch by Westerners.

In Tawada's world, where the word "Japan" appears to have been forgotten, the country is remembered for dashi stock and umami, its practice of whaling, sardine-packed rush hour trains, culture of overwork and obsession with virtual idols.

Hiruko is a resident of Denmark, where she is a language teacher to migrant children and finds it difficult to fit in. She invents her own language, Panska, that is supposed to be a mish-mash of Scandinavian languages.

"If I just have someone to talk to, that will be enough," says Hiruko, craving the familiarity of the Japanese vocabulary and the soft caress of the language's intonation.

She gets tip-offs after appearing on a variety programme about lost languages, leading to a multi-city quest across Europe with an expanding ragtag entourage of characters.

While she leaves Denmark with Knut, a Danish linguistics student who converses with her in Panska, she comes to meet Tenzo, also known as Nanook, a native of Greenland who tries to pass off as Japanese, and his girlfriend Nora.

Completing the quintet is Akash, an Indian transgender woman who tags along after taking a fancy to Knut.

The novel contemplates beautifully the nuances of the Japanese language without veering into didactic territory - the use of the formal, distant anata vis-a-vis the casual kimi, both of which mean "you", or how the word natsukashii (nostalgic) "seemed to be made of mist, a mist I was wandering through with unsteady steps".

First published in Japanese in 2018, Scattered All Over The Earth reads like the Berlin-based Tawada's homage to her native country - she was born in Tokyo in 1960, but relocated to Germany when she was 22 and now writes in Japanese and German.

Readers who crave explosive drama will probably not enjoy the quiet narrative, which is heavily centred on conversations and the power of listening.

But the novel - the first in a planned trilogy - is an exquisite folkloric read of the power of language in shaping identity and what it means to lose a sense of self.

If you like this, read: Things Remembered And Things Forgotten by Kyoko Nakajima, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and Ian MacDonald (Sort of Books, 2021, $19.80, Books Kinokuniya). Loss - of a culture, a loved one or a cherished place - permeates this haunting collection of 10 stories about memory and grief.

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2. NON-FICTION

FEMINA: A NEW HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, THROUGH THE WOMEN WRITTEN OUT OF IT

Oxford historian Janina Ramirez re-examines the lives of influential women from the middle ages - the polymath Hildegard of Bingen and Anglo-Saxon ruler Aethelflaed, as well as lesser-known figures such as the Loftus Princess, who was buried in present-day North Yorkshire, and the Birka Warrior Woman, who was a Viking.

Many of these women chose an alternative way of life - stepping out of their domestic roles and thriving in spaces such as monasteries and workshops, Ramirez writes.

"That they could do this is testament not only to how formidable they were as individuals, but also to the fact that the medieval period was perhaps more accommodating than we think."

3. NON-FICTION

THE WRATH TO COME: GONE WITH THE WIND AND THE LIES AMERICA TELLS

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind, an epic romance set during the American Civil War and its aftermath, was a bestseller when it came out in 1936. The film version starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh is considered one of the greatest movies of all time.

But the famous story - with its problematic treatment of race, class and women - is also a kind of "skeleton key" to America's insidious myths and illusions about itself, argues literature professor Sarah Churchwell.

"When we understand the dark truths of American experience that have been veiled by one of the nation's favourite fantasies," she writes, "we can see how the country travelled from the start of the Civil War in 1861 to parading the flag of the side that lost the war through the US Capitol in 2021."

Examining Mitchell's tale amid a resurgence of white nationalism and Trumpism, Churchwell tries to answer the question: What has happened to America?

4. NON-FICTION

THE MESSENGER: MODERNA, THE VACCINE, AND THE BUSINESS GAMBLE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

This is the inside story of how biotech company Moderna, which developed one of the world's first Covid-19 vaccines, went from waning biotech unicorn to household name during the pandemic.

Wall Street Journal reporter Peter Loftus based the book on interviews with more than 150 people, including Moderna's employees, co-founders and investors.

5. FICTION

COMPLICIT

College lecturer Sarah Lai looks back regretfully on her past life in the film industry, after she is approached by a journalist investigating film producer Hugo North.

Lai tells the journalist about her experiences working with North, and his appetite for women and drugs.

Complicit, a thriller about the people who inflict, suffer from and turn a blind eye to sexual assault, is American author Winnie M. Li's second novel. Her 2017 debut, Dark Chapter, was inspired by her own rape in 2008.

6. FICTION

TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW

This is the story of Sadie and Sam, two friends bound by a love of video games.

They first meet in a hospital gaming room in the 1980s. As college students, they bump into each other again at a train station, sparking a creative partnership where they design video games together.

Their first game, Ichigo, is a blockbuster hit. More releases follow and the virtual worlds they build with the help of Sam's roommate, Marx, bring them money, fame as well as tragedy.

The title of this book by American author Gabrielle Zevin comes from Shakespeare's Macbeth, but overturns the bleak connotations of the original line.

A game, Marx says, is "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It is the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever".

7. FICTION

CULT CLASSIC

One night in New York, Lola is out for dinner with former colleagues when she runs into ex-boyfriend after ex-boyfriend.

First, there is Amos - now a "famous Amos" whose writing career has taken off. Later in the evening, Willis the long-jumper rears his head. Next up is Dave the jogger, who had tried, unsuccessfully, to get her into activities such as polar bear plunges.

These events are not coincidental, but the machinations of a contemporary cult run by Lola's former boss, a magazine editor-turned-mystical guru.

8. FICTION

HEARTS & BONES: LOVE SONGS FOR LATE YOUTH

Ireland-born writer Niamh Mulvey's debut collection contains 10 stories about relationships - between children and parents, brothers and sisters, and a woman and her lovers. The titular story, which takes its name from a Paul Simon song, is about a teenage girl who becomes pregnant while the abortion debates rage on in Ireland.

9. FICTION

A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON

Shortly after Prince Kadou becomes an uncle, he is called away to deal with a break-in at his kingdom's Shipbuilder's Guild. Keen to regain the trust of the queen, Kadou decides to investigate the break-in. He is assisted by new bodyguard Evemer Hoskadem and a romance eventually develops.

This fantasy novel by Alexandra Rowland, a Hugo Award-nominated podcaster, unfolds against a backdrop of political intrigue.

10. YOUNG ADULT

REBEL SKIES

In a land of flying ships and sky cities, servant girl Kurara toils away on the Midori, the empire's first airborne banqueting hall.

Fortunately for her, she has the coveted power to make paper come to life, which allows her to escape her old life and join the crew of a skyship as a Crafter, where she learns to hunt shikigami (wild paper spirits).

This debut is the first in a fantasy adventure trilogy by London-based writer and librarian Ann Sei Lin.