Yoko Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960, moved to Hamburg when she was twenty-two and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German, and has published several books-stories, novels, poems, plays, essays-in both languages. She has received numerous awards for her writing including the Akutagawa Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Goethe Medal and the National Book Award.
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. -- Kit Fan, author of THE INK CLOUD READER 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. -- Elizabeth McKenzie, author of THE DOG OF THE NORTH