Exophony

Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

By: Yoko Tawada

Narrated by: Jacqui Bardelang

Are you formed by your mother tongue?
How might the world unfold if you stepped outside of its rhythms?

In this playful and daring interrogation of language, the globally acclaimed Yoko Tawada reveals the poetics, politics and potential of existing outside one's mother tongue. From Senegalese writers discarding colonial-enforced French to the increasing use of loan words in her native Japanese, Tawada deconstructs the ways in which the world shapes and is shaped by languages: their hidden systems of power, their sweeping histories and, ultimately, the people who claim, reject, adapt or romanticise them.

Exophony is an invitation to revel in the possibilities that emerge when we dare to seek beyond the familiar - and a sharp, incisive series of essays in which Tawada's erudite wit and multidimensional curiosity sing.

©2025 Yoko Tawada (P)2025 Hachette Audio UK

Critic reviews

'The beauty of Tawada's work is that she treats the uncertain footing of the second language learner-and of the native speaker looking back on their first language with new eyes-not as a source of anxiety, but as a source of boundless creative potential.' (Reed McConnell)