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In the concluding volume of her enormously popular, mind-expanding, and cheerfully dystopian trilogy, Yoko Tawada's intrepid young band of friends strike out in search of the lost Land of Sushi.
The Archipelago of the Sun finds Hiruko still searching for her lost country, traveling around the Baltic on a mail boat. With her are Knut, a Danish linguist; Akash, an Indian in the process of moving to the opposite sex; Nanook, a Greenlander who once worked as a sushi chef; Nora, the German woman who loves Nanook but is equally concerned with social justice and the environment; and Susanoo, a former sushi chef who believes he is responsible for the entire group. But weren't they originally supposed to sail to Cape Town, and then on to India? Puzzled by this sudden change in route, which no one seems to remember anything about, they encounter long dead writers (Witold Gombrowicz, Hella Wuolijoki) on board, plus a cast of characters from literature, art, and myth. As the very existence of Hiruko and Susanoo's homeland is called into question, Susanoo meets the mythical princess he will marry, and Hiruko tells the others that she herself will be a house in which everyone can live. Though the trilogy comes to its end, their journey seems likely to continue.
"Tawada's usual spirit of cheerful speculation creates a believable, but impossible, set of circumstances for her appealing characters to muse upon, argue over, and learn from. Proof that thoughtful novels of ideas can be fun as well as provocative." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Tawada again proffers linguistic illuminations." ―Booklist
This information about Archipelago of the Sun was first featured
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credit: Nina Subin
Born in Tokyo in 1960, Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese and German: she has received the Akutagawa, Kleist, Lessing, Noma, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Tanizaki prizes, as well as the Goethe Medal. Her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award. Rivka Galchen in the New York Times Magazine hailed her work as "magnificently strange."
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