Fr. 29.90

Exophony - Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

English · Paperback / Softback

Will be released 24.07.2025

Description

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''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 How perfect that Tawada''s first essay collection in English dives deep into her lifelong fascination with the possibilities opened up by cross-hybridizing languages. Tawada famously writes in both Japanese and German, but her interest in language reaches beyond any mere dichotomy. The term ''exophonic'', which she first heard in Senegal, has a special allure for the author: ''I was already familiar with similar terms, ''immigrant literature,'' or ''creole literature,'' but ''exophonic'' had a much broader meaning, referring to the general experience of existing outside of one''s mother tongue.'' Tawada revels in explorations of cross-cultural and intra-language possibilities (and along the way deals several nice sharp raps to the global primacy of English). The accent here, as in her fiction, is the art of drawing closer to the world through defamiliarization. Never entertaining a received thought, Tawada seeks the still-to-be-discovered truths, as well as what might possibly be invented entirely whole cloth. Exophony opens a new vista into Yoko Tawada''s world, and delivers more of her signature erudite wit - at once cross-grained and generous, laser-focused and multidimensional, slyly ironic and warmly companionable.

Product details

Authors Yoko Tawada, Tawada Yoko
Assisted by Priscilla Layne (Translation)
Publisher Little Brown
 
Languages English
Product format Paperback / Softback
Release 24.07.2025
 
EAN 9780349704197
ISBN 978-0-349-70419-7
No. of pages 192
Subjects Fiction > Poetry, drama
Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies

Essays, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Literacy, Literary essays, Literacy (Theories of reading and writing)

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