number9dream

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

By: David Mitchell

Narrated by: Daniel York Loh

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Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2001

The second novel from the critically-acclaimed author of GHOSTWRITTEN and CLOUD ATLAS.

As Eiji Miyake's twentieth birthday nears, he arrives in Tokyo with a mission - to locate the father he has never met. So begins a search that takes him into the seething city's underworld, its lost property offices and video arcades, and on a journey that zigzags from reality to the realm of dreams. But until Eiji has fallen in love and exorcised his childhood demons, the belonging he craves will remain, tantalizingly, just beyond his grasp.


(P)2020 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2001 David Mitchell

Critic reviews

Dazzling

A delirious mix of thriller, tragedy, fantasy, video games and a portrait of uneasy modern Japan

Wildly inventive

An extraordinary literary cabaret of dreams, visions and pastiches, from video-game rides and gangster rumbles to suicide submariners. Endlessly ingenious and hugely enjoyable - but oddly moving as well. A rich showcase for 21st-century fiction (Boyd Tonkin)

Exceptional . . . More than a surreal detective story or coming-of-age novel, more than a portrait of Tokyo or stream of adolescent consciousness, it is unique: clever, unusual, gripping and beautifully written

I haven't enjoyed a novel so much in ages; wild, bristling with strangeness (Books of the Year)

Mitchell catches the multicoloured atmosphere of Tokyo brilliantly . . . He is a wonderfully amphibious writer, happy in all manner of elements, and seems able to produce an endless parade of interesting characters. number9dream resounds to the same marvellous chatter of different voices that marked out Ghostwritten, his outstanding first novel (Robert Macfarlane)

The wonderfully energetic prose is constantly entertaining, filled with daring imaginative stunts and the crackling rhythms of the digital age . . . Mitchell's Tokyo is a deliciously confusing virtual reality, a maze of bewildering information. Most impressive of all, though, is the fact that when you reach the end, wondering if it was all just a dream, you don't feel cheated in the least

Ghostwritten's range of voices was astonishing. Each narrator revealed anew the author's dexterity and his ability to imagine lives. His second novel is more ambitious and more impressive . . . the main plot drives one urgently onwards, and Mitchell's delight in his inventiveness is infectious

Generally speaking, the second novel confronts two pitfalls: rehashing 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

The external action of the novel is always engaging. But such is Mitchell's beautifully precise style that he can make inaction just as pleasurable . . . The prose bespeaks a kind of observational rapture that offers the smell of Tokyo streets or even the movements of a cockroach as tiny, cherishable shards

Dangerously addictive . . . Mitchell's writing displays the kind of literary acrobatics and metaphysical depth that won him such huge accolades for his first novel . . . a brave novel, all the more admirable for his ability to push back the boundaries of the imagination

The diversity and sheer pace of the narrative sets it well apart from most contemporary British fiction and Mitchell is an original with a flair for fantasy . . . oozing panache, this cosmopolitan and fresh odyssey engages and entertains

A great story badly pronounced

The story is set in Japan, so I think the reader should have some understanding of the Japanese language and how it’s pronounced. Although people who haven’t lived in Japan or don’t know Japanese might not notice, some of us who do live in Japan, as David Mitchell did, might be put off, as I was, by the constant mispronunciations of Japanese words. I think that for books set in foreign countries or translated books, the narrator should have some familiarity with the original language.