number9dream

Even more dazzling than Ghostwritten - Matt Thorne, Independent on Sunday

I read David Mitchell's number9dream at the start of the year and images from it still bob up. The novel, set mainly in Tokyo, is fragmented and confusing but intensely vivid. Sometimes it is as though Mitchell cannot bring himself to part with an idea, never mind that it may not have a natural place in his jangling narrative. His delight in his storytelling is very engaging. - Victoria Lane, Telegraph Books of the Year

Unique: clever, unusual, gripping and beautifully written - Mary Wakefield, Literary Review

David Mitchell's GHOSTWRITTEN, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, was described by A S Byatt as "one of the best first novels I have read". Generally speaking, the second novel confronts two pitfalls: re-hashing 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...[He] handles contrasting genres, styles and tone with assurance...The novel is at once a quest, a violent thriller, a black fable, a family tragedy and a love story... Reality is mixed with dreams, myth, stories within stories, cyberspace and Zen-like revelations...[A] sheer abundance of ideas...linguistic invention and...stylistic display...the book as a