Title: Scattered All Over the Earth

Series: Scattered All Over the Earth Trilogy

Author: Yōko Tawada

Translator: Margaret Mitsutani

Genres: Literary, Science Fiction

Publishing Date: 26 April 2018

Original Language: Japanese

Pages: ~219

CW: Transphobia, Deadnaming, Racism, Animal death, Misogyny, Sexual content

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Read if you’re looking for: 

• Quirky, literary sci-fi translated from Japanese
• A story about the power of language
• Multiple POV’s from diverse & likable characters
• All kinds of LGBTQIA+ representation
• Found family
• Mommy issues

This is the first book I’ve read from Tawada, and I am intrigued to read more. This is a story of found family set in the near future. Japan no longer exists, due to flooding from climate change, and the Japanese people are scattered all over the earth. It seems that Japan itself has almost been forgotten by the rest of the world, and is often know as “the land of sushi” in conversation. Though this is told in multiple POV’s, there does seem to be a main character, Hiruko, a Japanese woman living in Scandinavia, who is on a journey to find at least one other speaker of her native language. In the process, she meets several other people with whom she bonds, and they form a found family.

The highlight of this book are the characters. Tawada weaves the multiple POV’s together expertly, and they were all engaging, with the characters feeling like real people. Normally, multiple POV’s can sometimes be hit or miss, with some of them not being as interesting as the others, but all the characters in this book were fleshed out in such a way that I felt that I knew them right away, and it didn’t take long to get into the flow of each chapter. The book also has great representation of all kinds, with main characters of different races, nationalities, gender identities, and sexual orientations. This is part one of a trilogy, which have all been released in Japanese, but the English translations of the second and third books haven’t come out yet, so I’m excited to see where the rest of this heart-warming story goes.