Synopses & Reviews
David Mitchell's electrifying debut novel takes readers on a mesmerizing trek across a world of human experience through a series of ingeniously linked narratives.
Oblivious to the bizarre ways in which their lives intersect, nine characters — a terrorist in Okinawa, a record-shop clerk in Tokyo, a money-laundering British financier in Hong Kong, an old woman running a tea shack in China, a transmigrating "noncorpum" entity seeking a human host in Mongolia, a gallery-attendant-cum-art-thief in Petersburg, a drummer in London, a female physicist in Ireland, and a radio deejay in New York — hurtle toward a shared destiny of astonishing impact. Like the book's one non-human narrator, Mitchell latches onto his host characters and invades their lives with parasitic precision, making Ghostwritten a sprawling and brilliant literary relief map of the modern world.
Review:
"
Ghostwritten is also elegantly composed, gracefully plotted and full of humor....[It] recall[s] Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in its emotional scope and its ambitions. Like the great Russians, Mitchell makes us feel that more is at stake than individual lives, although it?s by individual lives that pain and loss are measured."
Los Angeles TimesReview:
"This is one of the best first novels I?ve read for a long time....I read a proof of this on a transatlantic flight. When I got off in Atlanta, I couldn't put it down. I pulled my luggage in one hand along corridors and escalators, and held David Mitchell's last chapter up to my nose with the other. I finished at the carousel. It seemed appropriate. And it's even better the second time." A. S. Byatt
Review:
"David Mitchell's first novel is a firework display....The assurance and panache are truly remarkable....This is a remarkable novel by a young writer of remarkable talent." The Observer (London)
Review:
"Mitchell...has a gift for fiction's natural pleasures – intricate surprises, insidiously woven narratives, ingenious voices... " The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"Mitchell deftly sketches each character to such a compelling extent that you become totally immersed....His nine characters and their random but fateful interactions provide a playful, suspenseful foray into our ever-shrinking world." Entertainment Weekly
Review:
"[Mitchell's] detail boasts the quiet and proud precision which makes his Englishness no surprise." The Seattle Times
About the Author
David Mitchell lives in Hiroshima, Japan.
Don't Miss
