number9dream
On sale
2nd October 2008
Price: £9.99
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ebook / ISBN-13: 9781844568840
‘ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANTLY INVENTIVE WRITERS OF THIS, OR ANY, COUNTRY’ INDEPENDENT
Shortlisted for the Booker and James Tait Black Memorial Prizes
‘Spellbinding’
INDEPENDENT
‘Exceptional’
LITERARY REVIEW
‘Beautifully precise’
GUARDIAN
‘Marvellous’
OBSERVER
‘Constantly entertaining’
EVENING STANDARD
The captivating second novel from the critically acclaimed author of Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas
As Eiji Miyake’s twentieth birthday nears, he arrives in Tokyo with a mission – to locate the father he has never met. So begins a search that takes him into the seething city’s underworld, its lost property offices and video arcades, and on a journey that zigzags from reality to the realm of dreams. But until Eiji has fallen in love and exorcised his childhood demons, the belonging he craves will remain, tantalizingly, just beyond his grasp.
PRAISE FOR DAVID MITCHELL
‘A thrilling and gifted writer’
FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good’
DAILY MAIL
‘Mitchell is, clearly, a genius’
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘An author of extraordinary ambition and skill’
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
‘A superb storyteller’
THE NEW YORKER
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Reviews
Dazzling
A delirious mix of thriller, tragedy, fantasy, video games and a portrait of uneasy modern Japan
Wildly inventive
An extraordinary literary cabaret of dreams, visions and pastiches, from video-game rides and gangster rumbles to suicide submariners. Endlessly ingenious and hugely enjoyable - but oddly moving as well. A rich showcase for 21st-century fiction
Exceptional . . . More than a surreal detective story or coming-of-age novel, more than a portrait of Tokyo or stream of adolescent consciousness, it is unique: clever, unusual, gripping and beautifully written
I haven't enjoyed a novel so much in ages; wild, bristling with strangeness
Mitchell catches the multicoloured atmosphere of Tokyo brilliantly . . . He is a wonderfully amphibious writer, happy in all manner of elements, and seems able to produce an endless parade of interesting characters. number9dream resounds to the same marvellous chatter of different voices that marked out Ghostwritten, his outstanding first novel
The wonderfully energetic prose is constantly entertaining, filled with daring imaginative stunts and the crackling rhythms of the digital age . . . Mitchell's Tokyo is a deliciously confusing virtual reality, a maze of bewildering information. Most impressive of all, though, is the fact that when you reach the end, wondering if it was all just a dream, you don't feel cheated in the least
Ghostwritten's range of voices was astonishing. Each narrator revealed anew the author's dexterity and his ability to imagine lives. His second novel is more ambitious and more impressive . . . the main plot drives one urgently onwards, and Mitchell's delight in his inventiveness is infectious
Generally speaking, the second novel confronts two pitfalls: rehashing the first novel or eliminating all trace of it for fear of rehashing it. In number9dream, Mitchell negotiates both dangers, retaining what is best of Ghostwritten and creating an original and in many ways more complex work
The external action of the novel is always engaging. But such is Mitchell's beautifully precise style that he can make inaction just as pleasurable . . . The prose bespeaks a kind of observational rapture that offers the smell of Tokyo streets or even the movements of a cockroach as tiny, cherishable shards
Dangerously addictive . . . Mitchell's writing displays the kind of literary acrobatics and metaphysical depth that won him such huge accolades for his first novel . . . a brave novel, all the more admirable for his ability to push back the boundaries of the imagination
The diversity and sheer pace of the narrative sets it well apart from most contemporary British fiction and Mitchell is an original with a flair for fantasy . . . oozing panache, this cosmopolitan and fresh odyssey engages and entertains
He is a very energised and original sentence architect who elevates the steaming, fizzing city of Tokyo into a city of the imagination . . . a gifted and unusual writer
Superlative
A novel as accomplished as anything being written. Funny, tenderhearted and horrifying, often all at once, it refashions the rudiments of the coming-of-age novel into something completely original
number9dream, with its propulsive energy, its Joycean eruption of language and playfulness, represents further confirmation that David Mitchell should be counted among the top young novelists working today . . . He writes like a dream, the kind you don't want to end
Delirious - a grand blur of overwhelming sensation
Mitchell's new novel has been described as a cross between Don DeLillo and William Gibson, and although that's a perfectly serviceable cocktail-party formula, it doesn't do justice to this odd, fitfully compelling work