Synopses & Reviews
From the author of Cloud Atlas, now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom TykwerNumber9Dream is the international literary sensation from a writer with astonishing range and imaginative energy—an intoxicating ride through Tokyo’s dark underworlds and the even more mysterious landscapes of our collective dreams.
David Mitchell follows his eerily precocious, globe-striding first novel, Ghostwritten, with a work that is in its way even more ambitious. In outward form, Number9Dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister’s death and his mother’s breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses—through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck—a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father’s identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer. Why is the line between the world of his experiences and the world of his dreams so blurry? Why do so many horrible things keep happening to him? What is it about the number 9? To answer these questions, and ultimately to come to terms with his inheritance, Eiji must somehow acquire an insight into the workings of history and fate that would be rare in anyone, much less in a boy from out of town with a price on his head and less than the cost of a Beatles disc to his name.
From the Hardcover edition.
Review
"An absorbing coming-of-age tale, this Booker Prize finalist will be appreciated by adult readers and some teens willing to invest time and effort in unraveling the rich complexities of the novel's language and imagery." KLIATT
Review
"Booker nominee Mitchell offers fans of Kafka, Pynchon, and DeLillo state-of-the-art dreams of a Tokyo landscape that could have come straight out of a video game. A demented, maddeningly playful, important book." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"A novel as accomplished as anything being written." Newsday
Review
"Mitchell's pyrotechnics are never less than interesting, but they are often less than satisfying; giddy with the fantastical possibilities of his narrative, he sometimes forgets his responsibility to his readers." New Yorker
Review
"Flexing his considerable stylistic muscle, he plays with form while hewing true to a tightly plotted tale that pulls you along, wondering where it will all end that, and what all the Beatles references mean. This is a terrific book." Booklist
Synopsis
Number9Dream is the international literary sensation from a writer with astonishing range and imaginative energy an intoxicating ride through Tokyo's dark underworlds and the even more mysterious landscapes of our collective dreams.
David Mitchell follows his eerily precocious, globe-striding first novel, Ghostwritten, with a work that is in its way even more ambitious. In outward form, Number9Dream is a Dickensian coming-of-age journey: Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer. Why is the line between the world of his experiences and the world of his dreams so blurry? Why do so many horrible things keep happening to him? What is it about the number 9? To answer these questions, and ultimately to come to terms with his inheritance, Eiji must somehow acquire an insight into the workings of history and fate that would be rare in anyone, much less in a boy from out of town with a price on his head and less than the cost of a Beatles disc to his name.
Synopsis
David Mitchell is the award-winning and bestselling author of
The Bone Clocks, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, and
Ghostwritten. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by
Time in 2007. With KA Yoshida, Mitchell translated from the Japanese the internationally bestselling memoir
The Reason I Jump. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
David Mitchell is the author of the international bestseller
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, named a best book of the year by
Time, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, and
The New York Times; Black Swan Green, which was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by
Time; Cloud Atlas, which was a Man Booker Prize finalist;
Number9Dream, which was short-listed for the Man Booker as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; and
Ghostwritten, awarded the
Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best book by a writer under thirty-five and short-listed for the
Guardian First Book Award. Hailed as “the novelist who’s shown us fiction’s future” by
The Washington Post, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by
Time in 2007. He lives in Ireland.
From the Hardcover edition.