SCATTERED ALL OVER THE EARTH. As I hung up and tossed my phone back onto the picnic rug from which I have been soaking up the elusive British sunshine, it struck me that the title of the novel lying in front of me might well have been a subheading for the conversation I’d just had.
Translated from the Japanese original, Yoko Tawada’s novel is an exploration of language and identity. It’s the story of unlikely friendships which lead a motley crew of characters to traverse Europe in search of meaning, which they find both in the linguistic nuances of words, and in the silence which lingers between them.
Each chapter is narrated by a different voice, leaving the reader caught up in the unpredictable nature of the movements and conversations of the characters. Yet it also gives the reader space to reflect on the journeys each of the characters are undertaking; what they are searching for, and what they are running away from.
Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006, where she currently resides. She writes in Japanese and German and her work, which tugs at the boundaries of language and reality, has received international critical acclaim.
I have to admit however that I first came across Tawada in a First Year German translation exam. Sitting at the end of a wooden lecture theatre bench, I remember deeply questioning my knowledge of the German language, as the narrator of my translation turned into a Polar Bear.
It seemed that Kafka’s protagonist Gregor Samsa wasn’t the only one undergoing an unexpected metamorphosis that day, but rather this was now also underway in a passage which was almost impossible to translate - that, of course, being the point of the exam.
Memoirs of a Polar Bear and ungeheur Ungeziefer aside, I’d vowed that once I’d finished my degree, I’d read a novel by Tawada. I’d spotted Scattered all over the Earth on the table at Waterstones in my final week at Cambridge, and picked it up, partly out of curiosity to see whether it might make more sense than the out-of-context passages we had to translate.
A year on, I’m glad to say it did - just.
Part of the reason I think the novel resonated so strongly with me was due to its exploration of co-existent identities. In Tawada’s novel, Japan has disappeared, and her characters are in a modern Europe, trying to find links to remaining native-speakers as they go about their lives amidst people oblivious to their homeland.
I was reflecting last week that this will be the first summer in about four years that I’m not preparing to pack up and move my life to another city.
I feel immensely grateful for the time I have spent across different cities, and the quirks, joys, and people each one of them brought - and continues to bring, as friendships extend over oceans and video calls.
Yet there is a little part of me that I sometimes feel is still sat on a 4 Express Train on the New York City Subway, or strolling between the grandiose facades of Vienna’s Ringstrasse searching for strudel, or even cycling down by the River Cam to The Orchard Tea Garden in Grantchester.
There is another part of me that knows that my time in all of these places was exactly the length it needed to be. And that’s not to say I’d never move back, or that a quick day trip for a lunch and a stroll is not in order - rather, the contrary.
When I catch myself ruminating about what Anna in whichever foreign city would be doing, or as is often the case, what she’d be having for dinner, I let my imagination wander, before bringing it back to the fridge in front of me.
At this time of year, as many friends are about to disperse across the country and the world, from Boston to Bishkek, St Andrew’s to Singapore, it’s easy to nostalgically dwell on the past, or be filled with anxiety about the uncertainties of the future.
I’ve been trying to remind myself lately to soak up the present; moments spent with those I’ve been lucky enough to cross paths (and indeed flightpaths) with, laughter, lunch, an abundance of Bank Holiday Mondays and the rare British sunshine.
Scattered all over the Earth, from the picnic rug in the garden.