Scattered All Over the Earth

I picked up Yoko Tawada’s novel on a whim. I liked the cover. The blurb on the fly intrigued me. The first two paragraphs captivated me. Scattered All Over the Earth explores the nature and meaning of language, the origins of identity, and the myriad ways in which the world can and does change.

The story takes place in a future where the climate crisis has reached the point where entire land masses disappear and the number of people seeking refuge on the remaining continents is increasing. It follows the fortunes of a disparate bunch of people who travel around Europe seeking some kind of meaning to their lives.

Safely Gathered In

Safely Gathered In is the first collection of short stories by Sarah Schofield, an author and lecturer in creative writing based in the north west of England. The stories have an edge to them, presenting a skewed perspective on the mundanities of life, the things unspoken in relationships, the way we assimilate grief and fear rather than confront it head on. It is a largely female perspective, the women in the stories and their survival mechanisms the focal point. The men depicted in these tales are fools, the women looking to them for something they can’t give.

Father May Be an Elephant, and Mother Only a Small Basket, But …

Gogu Shyamala’s collection of short stories uses allegory, magical realism and fable to document a rural childhood in the Indian state of Telangana. These tales are not whimsical, though, dealing with matters of caste, sexualisation of girls and the violence of poverty. They also reflect Shyamala’s politics, her involvement in Indian democratic movements and her activism, without this being overbearing. There is a lightness to the way Shyamala presents her stories.

Babbitt

Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt is a classic of American literature. Set in the early 1920s, it follows the titular George Babbitt, realtor, Presbyterian, civic booster and Republican, through his middle class life in his suburban home. The novel is a satire on the American Dream before the phrase was coined.