Exophony

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.
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.
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.
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.'
Doubles as a clever metatextual meditation on its own composition.
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.
In these deft essays, Tawada, who writes in both Japanese and German, wanders through cities and languages, treating every border crossing as an adventure.
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.
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.