Patrik, who sometimes calls himself "the patient," is a literary researcher living in present-day Berlin. The city is coming back to life after lockdown, but Patrik cannot leave the house and hardly manages to get out of bed. When he shaves his head, his girlfriend scolds him. 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?" Then at a café (or in the memory of being at a café?), he meets a mysterious stranger. The man's name is Leo-Eric Fu, and somehow he already knows Patrik...
It’s almost a Celan smoothie: icy, sweet, and, of course, foamy, a little treat from the tart fruits of the poet’s labor. You could walk around the mall with it. It coats your tongue, numbs your hand, and soon you have to pee, and it’s all very nice, and then it’s over. Tawada has smuggled tons of Celan references into it.
Allows Tawada a fresh opportunity for linguistic play—the wit that distinguishes all her work—as well as insights that aren’t solely playful ... The genius of Yoko Tawada is to dramatize how speaking in tongues, tearing language from its roots, may offer the best option for humanity under ever-worsening threat.
Not a plot-driven novel ... Tawada aptly captures the sense of everlasting monotony of life under lockdown conditions ... Takes up language itself as a major motif. Characteristically, Tawada plays with the German in which her novel is written ... It takes only a passing knowledge of poetry and the world of academia, though, to understand Patrik’s quietly ironic sense of humor—one of the most enjoyable aspects of the novel.
