Scattered All Over the Earth

by Yoko Tawada

Book Club Spotlight

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This month, our book club is reading Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada. It’s a strange, sharp, and quietly dystopian novel that asks what happens when your language disappears before you do.

Set in a near-future world where Japan has literally vanished from the map, the story follows a displaced woman named Hiruko as she travels across Europe searching for connection, identity, and traces of a homeland that no longer exists. Along the way, she gathers a small group of outsiders, each shaped by different kinds of loss, language, and longing.

Tawada explores themes of migration, invented language, belonging, and erasure with a tone that is both wry and deeply humane.

We are still reading it, and I will share a full review at the end of the month. But if you enjoy speculative fiction that is more quiet than chaotic, this is one worth picking up.

If you enjoy speculative fiction that’s more quiet than chaotic, this is one worth picking up.

If the mood of this one speaks to you, you might also enjoy the sense of detachment in Pizza Girl, or the spare, surreal tone of The Beggar Student. Both explore grief, identity, and emotional fragmentation in different ways.

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My Asian Era is where literature meets culture — thoughtful reviews, quiet voices, and stories worth slowing down for.