Scattered All Over the Earth
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Narrated by:
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Cindy Kay
About this listen
A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian new novel by Yoko Tawada, winner of the National Book Award
Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian): "homemade language. no country to stay in. three countries I experienced. insufficient space in brain. so made new language. homemade language."
As she searches for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue, Hiruko soon makes new friends. Her troupe travels to France, encountering an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra-nationalist named Breivik; unrequited love; Kakuzo robots; red herrings; uranium; an Andalusian matador. Episodic and mesmerizing scenes flash vividly along, and soon they're all next off to Stockholm.
With its intrepid band of companions, Scattered All Over the Earth (the first novel of a trilogy) may bring to mind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or a surreal Wind in the Willows, but really is just another sui generis Yoko Tawada masterwork.
©2018 Yoko Tawada; Translation copyright 2022 by Margaret Mitsutani (P)2022 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Max doesn't remember his mother, who was murdered by burglars before they emigrated from Beirut to New Jersey. He lives with his father, Rasheed, who is enamored of his concept of American culture - baseball and barbeques - and tries to shed his Lebanese heritage completely.
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Excellent
- By Cheyenne on 06-13-15
By: Karim Dimechkie
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The Lost Carousel of Provence
- By: Juliet Blackwell
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Long, lonely years have passed for the crumbling Château Clement, nestled well beyond the rolling lavender fields and popular tourist attractions of Provence. Once a bustling and dignified ancestral estate, now all that remains is the château's gruff, elderly owner and the softly whispered secrets of generations buried and forgotten. But time has a way of exposing history's dark stains, and when American photographer Cady Drake finds herself drawn to the château and its antique carousel, she longs to explore the relic's shadowy origins.
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Loved It!
- By T Heskett on 09-23-18
By: Juliet Blackwell
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I'm Supposed to Protect You from All This
- A Memoir
- By: Nadja Spiegelman
- Narrated by: Nadja Spiegelman
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For a long time, Nadja Spiegelman believed her mother was a fairy. More than her famous father, Maus creator Art Spiegelman, and even more than most mothers, hers - French-born New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly - exerted a force over reality that was both dazzling and daunting. As Nadja's body changed and "began to whisper to the adults around me in a language I did not understand", their relationship grew tense.
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Aweful
- By Haley Abreu on 07-05-17
By: Nadja Spiegelman
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The Paris Key
- By: Juliet Blackwell
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As a girl, Genevieve Martin spent the happiest summer of her life in Paris, learning the delicate art of locksmithing at her uncle's side. But since then, living back in the States, she has become more private, more subdued. She has been an observer of life rather than an active participant, holding herself back from those around her, including her soon-to-be ex-husband. Paris never really left Genevieve, and, as her marriage crumbles, she finds herself faced with an incredible opportunity.
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Not a cozy murder mystery but a cozy slice of life
- By sams on 10-23-15
By: Juliet Blackwell
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Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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The Bastard of Istanbul
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the "bastard" of the title, Asya, a 19-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul.
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A tender gift from far away
- By Barbara on 11-07-07
By: Elif Shafak
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Three Daughters of Eve
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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One Amazing Thing
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Purva Bedi, Soneela Nankani, Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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American Gods [TV Tie-In]
- By: Neil Gaiman
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 20 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow's best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday.
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Read other Neil Gaiman first
- By Robert on 04-16-11
By: Neil Gaiman
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Find Me Unafraid
- Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum
- By: Kennedy Odede, Jessica Posner
- Narrated by: Korey Jackson, Mandy Siegfried, P.J. Ochlan (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Find Me Unafraid tells the uncommon love story between two uncommon people whose collaboration sparked a successful movement to transform the lives of vulnerable girls and the urban poor. With a foreword by Nicholas Kristof.
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A difficult and rewarding listen
- By R. MCRACKAN on 08-23-18
By: Kennedy Odede, and others
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Upside Down Inside Out
- By: Monica McInerney
- Narrated by: Melissa Eccleston
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Ever been tempted to pretend you were someone exotic, someone adventurous, someone different? Set in Ireland, England and Australia, this is the funny and heart-warming story of two people whose lives are about to turn upside down and inside out. Eva is off to Australia on a break from her job in a Dublin delicatessen, hoping to forget a fizzled romance and find inspiration for a new career. Joseph is taking a holiday from his stressful London job. Each is on a search for some answers about life.
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The story was slow and whiney.
- By DTA on 08-22-15
By: Monica McInerney
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September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
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A couple in their 30s live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. Soon they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife - the days have more light and color.
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A Novel As Poetry
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September 1913. A young Pole suffering from tuberculosis arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen in the village of Görbersdorf, a health resort in the Silesian mountains. Every evening the residents gather to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the great issues of the day: Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women born inferior? War or peace? Meanwhile, disturbing things are happening in the guesthouse and the surrounding hills. Someone—or something—seems to be watching, attempting to infiltrate this cloistered world.
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What listeners say about Scattered All Over the Earth
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-04-24
Interesting premise
It was slow and meandering. ideas were chill but no plot or character arcs to follow.
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- robin helman
- 07-29-24
The whispering narrator is too hard to hear
The narrator whispers every time a certain character speaks, and it’s way too hard to hear
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1 person found this helpful
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- Paul Anthony Rouphail
- 02-20-23
Incoherent
This novel reads like an undergraduate’s attempt at writing fiction. Completely lacking any coherence to a plot, and the characters are bafflingly stupid. Quit listening about 3 chapters in. Don’t waste your time
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- Zeljko Z.
- 02-24-23
Scattered
As the title suggest but o find it intriguing and interesting. there are many cultural an linguistic juxtapositions. Attempts of cross cultural communication and ethnic boundaries
Zeljko Zic
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- Yup
- 03-19-23
No plot, no world building
Disjointed conversations, no explanation about what the world is like 5 chapters in, boring subject matter, likely because there is little to no character development. Each chapter is from a different character’s perspective, but the author doesn’t take the time to introduce you to the characters.
Wish I could return this and get my credit back
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