The highly anticipated new novel from Yoko Tawada
Published 11th July 2024
Paperback | £14.99 | Dialogue Books
ISBN: 9780349704234
This July, Dialogue Books will publish Spontaneous Acts, a novel from the award-winning Yoko Tawada, that dives into the search for connection and its meaning.
Patrik, a literary researcher, longs for an anchor in a world that constantly overwhelms him. Though Patrik’s beloved opera houses are open again following lockdown, “the patient,” as he sometimes calls himself, cannot bring himself to leave the house and hardly manages to get out of bed. As Patrik’s journey to find a true connection begins, he meets a mysterious stranger, Leo-Eric Fu, who already seems to know Patrik…
Spontaneous Acts unfolds like a lucid dream in which the solace of friendship, reading, conversation, music, seeing and being seen weave a life together across decades, languages, and cultures.
Exploring important issues of today such as toxic masculinity, racism and demands of capitalism, Tawada’s mesmerizing new story unravels these demanding themes masterfully, balancing them with light-hearted inventiveness and playfulness.
Praise for Spontaneous Acts
“Yoko Tawada disrupts our perception and reveals the terror and beauty of our world as we get lost in it and regain our footing through reading her novels.” – Kit Fan, novelist, poet and critic
Praise for Yoko Tawada
“Every Yoko Tawada novel pulls the ground out from under us, but gives us new senses in return.” – Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing
“Something about the way Tawada writes . . . allows the reader to take the most surreal and fantastical elements of the work completely seriously.” – Lucy Scholes
“Tawada writes beautifully about unbearable things.” – Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither
ABOUT YOKO TAWADA
Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, educated at Waseda University and has lived in Germany since 1982, where she received her Ph.D. in German literature. She received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for The Bridegroom Was a Dog. She writes in both German and Japanese, and in 1996, she won the Adalbert-von-Chamisso Prize, a German award recognizing foreign writers for their contributions to German culture. She also received the Goethe-Medal, an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany and the prestigious Kleist Prize (2016). Yoko Tawada’s reputation in the literary community is exceptional – she is critically acclaimed and beloved by literary authors, critics and readers alike, whilst her name frequently crops up in relation to discussions of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
For review copies and all publicity enquiries, please contact:
Jane Lau | jane.lau@midaspr.co.uk | +44 (0)20 7361 7860
