Yoko Tawada

Born in Tokyo in 1960, Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese and German: she has received the Akutagawa, Kleist, Lessing, Noma, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Tanizaki prizes, as well as the Goethe Medal. Her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award. Rivka Galchen in the New York Times Magazine hailed her work as “magnificently strange.”

Yoko Tawada

Born in Tokyo in 1960, Yoko Tawada writes in both Japanese and German: she has received the Akutagawa, Kleist, Lessing, Noma, Adelbert von Chamisso, and Tanizaki prizes, as well as the Goethe Medal. Her novel The Emissary won the National Book Award. Rivka Galchen in the New York Times Magazine hailed her work as “magnificently strange.”

Books by Yoko Tawada

  • The Naked Eye

    Yoko Tawada, Susan Bernofsky

    Paperback, 2009

    “Tawada’s slender accounts of alienation achieve a remarkable potency.”—Michael Porter, The New York Times
  • The Bridegroom Was a Dog

    Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani

    Paperback, 2013

    Internationally acclaimed author Yoko Tawada's most famous — and bizarre — tale in a stand-alone, New Directions Pearl edition.
  • Memoirs of a Polar Bear

    Yoko Tawada, Susan Bernofsky

    Paperback, 2016

    The Memoirs of a Polar Bear stars three generations of talented writers and performers—who happen to be polar bears
  • The Emissary

    Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani

    Paperback, 2018

    Winner of 2018 National Book Award in Translated Literature

    Library Journal Best Books of 2018

    Yoko Tawada’s new novel is a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality and fully displays...

  • The Bridegroom Was a Dog

    Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani

    E Book, 2012

    Internationally acclaimed author Yoko Tawada's most famous — and bizarre — tale in a stand-alone, New Directions Pearl edition.
  • The Naked Eye

    Yoko Tawada, Susan Bernofsky

    E Book, 2013

    “Tawada’s slender accounts of alienation achieve a remarkable potency.”—Michael Porter, The New York Times
  • Memoirs of a Polar Bear

    Yoko Tawada, Susan Bernofsky

    E Book, 2016

    The Memoirs of a Polar Bear stars three generations of talented writers and performers—who happen to be polar bears
  • The Emissary

    Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani

    E Book, 2018

    Winner of 2018 National Book Award in Translated Literature

    Library Journal Best Books of 2018

    Yoko Tawada’s new novel is a breathtakingly light-hearted meditation on mortality and fully displays...

  • Three Streets

    Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani

    Hardback, 2022

    Yoko Tawada—winner of the National Book Award—presents three terrific new ghost stories, each named after a street in Berlin
  • Scattered All Over the Earth

    Yoko Tawada, Margaret Mitsutani

    Paperback, 2022

    A mind-expanding, cheerfully dystopian new novel by Yoko Tawada, winner of the 2022 National Book Award