The highly anticipated new novel from award-winning, critically acclaimed novelist Yoko Tawada.
Patrik is a literary researcher living in Berlin, a city just coming back to life after lockdown. Though his beloved opera houses are open again, Patrik cannot leave the house and hardly manages to get out of bed.
He is supposed to give a paper at a conference in Paris, on the poetry collection Threadsuns by Paul Celan, but he can’t get past the first question on the registration form: ‘What is your nationality?’
As Patrik attempts to find a connection in a world that constantly overwhelms him, he meets a mysterious stranger. The man’s name is Leo-Eric Fu, and somehow he already knows Patrik . . .
Yoko Tawada’s mesmerizing new novel unfolds like a lucid dream in which the solace of friendship, reading, conversation, music – of seeing and being seen – is examined and celebrated.
Spontaneous Acts reaches out to all of us who find meaning and even obsession in the words of those before us.
Previous praise for 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
Patrik is a literary researcher living in Berlin, a city just coming back to life after lockdown. Though his beloved opera houses are open again, Patrik cannot leave the house and hardly manages to get out of bed.
He is supposed to give a paper at a conference in Paris, on the poetry collection Threadsuns by Paul Celan, but he can’t get past the first question on the registration form: ‘What is your nationality?’
As Patrik attempts to find a connection in a world that constantly overwhelms him, he meets a mysterious stranger. The man’s name is Leo-Eric Fu, and somehow he already knows Patrik . . .
Yoko Tawada’s mesmerizing new novel unfolds like a lucid dream in which the solace of friendship, reading, conversation, music – of seeing and being seen – is examined and celebrated.
Spontaneous Acts reaches out to all of us who find meaning and even obsession in the words of those before us.
Previous praise for 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
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Reviews
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.
Tawada is a master of defamiliarization and ultimately of the unity that can arise from the discord of human consciousness. I read Spontaneous Acts in a state of fascination and wonder.
This slim novel is a beautiful reflection on nationality, friendship and the value of art.
A love letter to language and to connection . . . Tawada effortlessly unfurls flesh and blood into a world of intricacies and untethered thoughts