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A Novel
by David MitchellDavid Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories.
A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?
A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions--to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea--that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective--strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut of a writer of astonishing gifts.
A. S. Byatt
This is one of the best first novels I've read for a long time. It's told in a series of gripping, interconnecting tales, in many voices, all of them imaginatively urgent. For all the plot's dazzling complexity, Mitchell's writing--which has many styles--is always simple and elegant. His people always engage the imagination, and the book is never clotted by its ambitions. It easily covers the global village but there's no sense that it's striving for multiculturalism or spectacular effects--just that Mitchell knows what he's doing. 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
This is one of the best first novels I've read for a long time. It's told in a series of gripping, interconnecting tales, in many voices, all of them imaginatively urgent. For all the plot's dazzling complexity, Mitchell's writing--which has many styles--is always simple and elegant. His people always engage the imagination, and the book is never clotted by its ambitions. It easily covers the global village but there's no sense that it's striving for multiculturalism or spectacular effects--just that Mitchell knows what he's doing. 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. Tibor Fischer
An astounding novel.
If you liked Ghostwritten, try these:
by Daniel Kehlmann
Published 2011
In Fame, nine episodes coalesce to form a coherent whole as Daniel Kehlmann plays a sophisticated game with reality and fiction - creating, in essence, a dazzling hall of mirrors.
by Jonathan Franzen
Published 2011
Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. An indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.
