This is, after all, a novel about the relationship between contingency and fate – about the way we structure our lives around narrative to give them meaning, about our inability to see the hidden points of connection, and ultimately I guess about our ability to tweak those points in order to radically change the world we live in. But what makes the experience of reading Ghostwritten even more rewarding, is the growing awareness that all these little points of literary triangulation add up to something so much bigger. It almost becomes a compulsion to trace all the little overlaps and twists which precede and follow from one narrative to the next. Part of the fun of reading Mitchell’s work is the way his stories interlock. It’s a book that I immediately wanted to rediscover as soon as I’d finished it. But I never expected anything quite so lateral in terms of narrative structure, so intricate in terms of plotting, or so profound in terms of concept. In fact I’ve already read Cloud Atlas and the 1001 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, so perhaps I was inclined to be biased. It read far more like the work of an author who already has several great works under his belt and has finally decided to produce their “real masterpiece.” I still can’t quite believe that this was a first novel. Its successor, FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES, GET UP EIGHT: A YOUNG MAN’S VOICE FROM THE SILENCE OF AUTISM, was published in 2017, and was also a Sunday Times bestseller. In 2013, THE REASON I JUMP: ONE BOY'S VOICE FROM THE SILENCE OF AUTISM by Naoki Higashida was published by Sceptre in a translation from the Japanese by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida and became a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. David Mitchell’s seventh novel is SLADE HOUSE (Sceptre, 2015). All three were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. 1 Sunday Times bestseller, and THE BONE CLOCKS which won the World Fantasy Best Novel Award. It was followed by BLACK SWAN GREEN, shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, which was a No. His third novel, CLOUD ATLAS, was shortlisted for six awards including the Man Booker Prize, and adapted for film in 2012. His second novel, NUMBER9DREAM, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Published in 1999, it was awarded the Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. After graduating from Kent University, he taught English in Japan, where he wrote his first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN. a huge new talent - Guardian Books of the Year Book Descriptionīorn in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. Daily Telegraphįabulously atmospheric and wryly perceptive. it beguiles, informs, shocks and captivates. The best first novel I have read in ages. Technically accomplished, but consistently funny and affecting: if you want to know what the distinctive literature of the 21st century will look like, begin here - Independent a remarkable novel by a young writer of remarkable talent - Observer I couldn't put it down - Mail on SundayĪ firework display. One of the best first novels I've read in a long time. The whole magpie's nest is loosely bundled into the net bag of a fiercely incomprehensible and mystical plot. Mitchell's dazzling debut covers a lot of geography and a vast range of topics. Mitchell also captures a tenderness, a yearning for something deeper, just below what often appears in as a bleak and cheerless surface - Observer Ghostwritten is a wide-reaching, multi-layered novel.
0 kommentar(er)
