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Number9dream

By David Mitchell

(46)

| Paperback | 9780340739761

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Book Description

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 precocContinue

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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Critics

  • I think I'm turning Japanese

    number9dream David Mitchell 422pp, Sceptre, £10 Buy it at a discount at BOL David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten , was one of the most highly praised fiction debuts of recent times, and with unusual justice. It was impressive mainly for its ima ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • When Blade Runner meets Jack Kerouac

    number9dream David Mitchell Sceptre £10, pp419 Buy it at a discount at BOL There was a recent cinema advertisement for a mobile phone company in which every object in an urban landscape was represented only by the letters of its name. The world is no ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • The hope of British fiction?

    Well, a startling phantasmagorical book taking the reader around modern Japan via a range of reality phases. I enjoyed this book immensely, especially around the significance of personal journeys for restoring meaning to the past, and how well-written text creates its own dynamic energy.

    Yes. Thi ... (continue)

    Well, a startling phantasmagorical book taking the reader around modern Japan via a range of reality phases. I enjoyed this book immensely, especially around the significance of personal journeys for restoring meaning to the past, and how well-written text creates its own dynamic energy.

    Yes. This book is remarkable, and it DOES restore my faith in British fiction. More cheerful than Overrated 'one story' McEwan, better crafted then Will Self, with heaps more emotional intelligence than Smug Barnes, and so much less pompous than Rushdie. Its closer to Sterne's 18th century fun run, Tristram Shandy, and modern day Tom Robbins (who is also a fine, albeit frenetic, writer).

    Read it.

    PS: 'number9dream" is taken from the title of a John Lennon song, on the 1974 album 'Walls and bridges'.

    Is this helpful?

    Ian Hodgson said on Sep 26, 2010 | Add your feedback

Book Details

  • Rating:
    (46)
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  • English Books
  • Paperback 320 Pages
  • ISBN-10: 0340739762
  • ISBN-13: 9780340739761
  • Publisher: Sceptre
  • Pub date: Mar 15, 2001
  • Dimensions: 968 mm x 1484 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Hardcover and eBook
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9780340739761 Paperback $16.10 -- The Book Depository
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