The highly anticipated, exquisite new novel from the award-winning, critically acclaimed Yoko Tawada, following our protagonist Patrik as he attempts to find connection in a world that constantly overwhelms him.

Praise for Yoko Tawada


'Something about the way Tawada writes... allows the reader to take the most surreal and fantastical elements of the work completely seriously' Lucy Scholes

'Tawada writes beautifully about unbearable things' Sara Baume


Praise for The Last Children of Tokyo

'Hums with beautiful strangeness' New York Times

'Achieves a technically impossible balance of open-hearted fable and cold-blooded satire' Financial Times

'A joyful exploration of language, a constantly surprising and exciting romp' Daisy Johnson

'Carries us beyond the limits of what it is to be human, in order to remind us what we must hold dearest in our conflicted world, our humanity' Sjón

The highly anticipated new novel from award-winning, critically acclaimed novelist Yoko Tawada.

Patrik is a literary researcher living in Berlin, a city just coming back to life after lockdown. Though his beloved opera houses are open again, Patrik cannot leave the house and hardly manages to get out of bed.

He is supposed to give a paper at a conference in Paris, on the poetry collection Threadsuns by Paul Celan, but he can't get past the first question on the registration form: 'What is your nationality?'

As Patrik attempts to find a connection in a world that constantly overwhelms him, he meets a mysterious stranger. The man's name is Leo-Eric Fu, and somehow he already knows Patrik . . .

Yoko Tawada's mesmerizing new novel unfolds like a lucid dream in which the solace of friendship, reading, conversation, music - of seeing and being seen - is examined and celebrated.

Spontaneous Acts reaches out to all of us who find meaning and even obsession in the words of those before us.

Previous praise for Tawada:

'Every Yoko Tawada novel pulls the ground out from under us, but gives us new senses in return.' Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

'Something about the way Tawada writes . . . allows the reader to take the most surreal and fantastical elements of the work completely seriously.' Lucy Scholes

'Tawada writes beautifully about unbearable things.' Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither