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Condition : Good.
Name of previous owner written in pen on flyleaf.
Eiji Miyake arrives in a sprawling Japanese metropolis to track down the father he has never met. But the city is a mapless place if you are 18, broke, and the only person you can trust is John Lennon. His 8-week hunt plunges into the hinterland between the city and the mind, where a Polish art movie is no less real than the coffee in front of him and letters from an Imperial Army soldier are signposts to next week, and where he crosses paths with numerologists, staion masters, gateballers, hostesses, organ harvesters and insane chefs. Philosophical, colourful, sometimes violent, this is a dazzlingly inventive novel about image, control and memory.
If anything more amazing than his debut, Ghostwritten, this Booker-shortlisted fantasia confirms the Hiroshima-based Mitchell as the most prodigally gifted of young British novelists ... 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. -- Boyd Tonkin Independent
David Mitchell's second novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and it's not hard to see why. The narrative has a langorous, dream-like quality - the result of being structured around Eiji's fantasies. Mitchell writes well in a range of different moods and styles: funny, poignant, humdrum, violent. Most strikingly of all, he depicts Tokyo as a bewildering labyrinth, which provides the perfect backdrop to the desultory wanderings of Eiji's mind. Observer
A clever, contemporary reworking of classic videogame/quest themes ... This videogame is made not of zeros and ones, however, but of dream fragments and poetry ... the beautiful, snake-like narrative twists and tangles around leitmotifs borrowed from action films, manga, anime, SF, fantasy, old detective novels, mob stories, coming-of-age romances, cyberpunk, epic quests and war stories ... Mitchell rolls around in implausibility, takes some incredible literary liberties, and - yes - gets away with it. -- Scarlett Thomas Independent
About the author (2001)
David Mitchell was born in 1969 and his first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN, was published by Sceptre in 1999 and won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second novel, NUMBER9DREAM (2001) was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He was chosen as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists 2003. His latest novel is entitled, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
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