Ghostwritten

David Mitchell

Dec 2007 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas


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.

Ratings and reviews

I read this book when it first came out. It is extremely well-written and engrossing, but unfortunately, the ending does not meet up to the rest of the novel. I recently saw the movie, Cloud Atlas, and I commented to my friend about how it reminded me of Ghost Written, a book I had read many years previously. Considering how much I loved the Cloud Atlas movie, it looks like the author managed to improve his endings while keeping his writing ability intact.

Part of the satisfaction of this book is going in blind and letting it unfold in front of you. It is an enjoying read. Mitchell gives randomness a home. He describes a fascinating world. When you read this book you get the sense that the author has a intimate knowledge about the places he writes about.

As a whole I liked cloud atlas better, but as a first novel quite good.

About the author

David Mitchell is the award-winning and bestselling author of Slade House, The Bone Clocks, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, andGhostwritten. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2007. With KA Yoshida, Mitchell translated from the Japanese the internationally bestselling memoir The Reason I Jump. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.