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Ghostwritten (Vintage Contemporaries) Kindle Edition

4.2 out of 5 stars 2,945 ratings

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.
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"What is real and what is not?" David Mitchell's Ghostwritten: A Novel in Nine Parts plays with precisely this question throughout its elaborately compartmentalized narrative. (That there are 10 chapters in this 9-part invention is just one more aspect of the author's mysterious schema.) With its multitude of voices and globe-girdling locations--Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Petersburg, London--this first novel offers readers a vertiginous, sometimes seductive, display of persona and place.

At the heart of Mitchell's book is the global extension of the postmodern city, and the networks (cultural, technological, phantasmagoric) to which it gives rise. A metropolis like Tokyo is quite literally beyond our comprehension: Twenty million people live and work in Tokyo. It's so big that nobody really knows where it stops. It's long since filled up the plain, and now it's creeping up the mountains to the west and reclaiming land from the bay in the east. The city never stops rewriting itself. In the time one street guide is produced, it's already become out of date. It's a tall city, and a deep one, as well as a spread-out one. At this level, urban sprawl becomes an epistemological condition. On one hand it leads to a Japanese death cult, purging the "unclean" from the city's subway with nerve gas. And on the other, it produces a certain splintering of the human personality. "I'm this person, I'm this person, I'm that person, I'm that person too," chants Neal, the narrator of the book's second part. "No wonder it's all such a ... mess." He's talking about his life as a Hong Kong trader, a "man of departments, compartments, apartments." But he might also be describing the experience of reading Ghostwritten. At once loquacious and knowing, leisurely and frantic, Mitchell offers a huge, but fragmentary, portmanteau. And while he's labored diligently to solder together the many parts--the aching bodies, the reality police, the impossibly complex machinery of contemporary life--his novel, too, may suffer from an excess of split personality. --Vicky Lebeau

From Publishers Weekly

Nine disparate but interconnected tales (and a short coda) in Mitchell's impressive debut examine 21st-century notions of community, coincidence, causality, catastrophe and fate. Each episode in this mammoth sociocultural tapestry is related in the first person, and set in a different international locale. The gripping first story introduces Keisuke Tanaka, aka Quasar, a fanatical Japanese doomsday cultist who's on the lam in Okinawa after completing a successful gas attack in a Tokyo subway. The links between Quasar and the novel's next narrator, Satoru Sonada, a teenage jazz aficionado, are tenuous at first. Both are denizens of Tokyo; both tend toward nearly monomaniacal obsessiveness; both went to the same school (albeit at different times) and shared a common teacher, the crass Mr. Ikeda. As the plot progresses, however, the connections between narrators become more complex, richly imaginative and thematically suggestive. Key symbols and metaphors repeat, mutating provocatively in new contexts. Innocuous descriptions accrue a subtle but probing irony through repetition; images of wild birds taking flight, luminous night skies and even bloody head wounds implicate and involve Mitchell's characters in an exquisitely choreographed dance of coincidence, connection and fluid, intuitive meanings. Other performers include a corrupt but (literally) haunted Hong Kong lawyer; an unnamed, time-battered Chinese tea-shop proprietress; a nomadic, disembodied intelligence on a voyage of self-discovery through Mongolia; a seductive and wily Russian art thief; a London-based musician, ghostwriter and ne'er-do-well; a brilliant but imperiled Irish physicist; and a loud-mouthed late-night radio-show host who unwittingly brushes with a global cyber-catastrophe. Already a sensation on its publication in England, Mitchell's wildly variegated story can be abstruse and elusive in its larger themes, but the gorgeous prose and vibrant, original construction make this an accomplishment not to be missed. 5-city author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B001334IYC
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 18, 2007
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2.0 MB
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 452 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780307426024
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307426024
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 2,945 ratings

About the author

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David Mitchell
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Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he taught English in Japan, where he wrote his first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN. Published in 1999, it was awarded the Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. 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. His third novel, CLOUD ATLAS, was shortlisted for six awards including the Man Booker Prize, and adapted for film in 2012. 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. 1 Sunday Times bestseller, and THE BONE CLOCKS which won the World Fantasy Best Novel Award. All three were longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. David Mitchell’s seventh novel is SLADE HOUSE (Sceptre, 2015).

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. 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.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
2,945 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book's individual stories engrossing and brilliant, with one review highlighting spectacularly virtuosic chapter-long revelations. Moreover, the writing is praised for its depth, with one customer noting its multiple layers of meaning, and customers appreciate the connections between segments. However, the character development receives mixed reviews, with some finding the interweaving detailed while others find the characters less well-developed. Additionally, the emotional content receives negative feedback, with customers describing it as dull, and the pacing is criticized for being slow.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

77 customers mention "Narrative quality"63 positive14 negative

Customers enjoy the narrative of the book, finding its individual stories engrossing and having an intriguing imagination, with one customer highlighting its spectacularly virtuosic chapter-long revelations.

"...; Ghostwritten - the debut novel from David Mitchell - is composed of 9 short stories (and an epilogue), each told by a different narrator, set in a..." Read more

"...That said, there are many things to like as well. Some stories were particularly gripping--in general, I found the stories through "Mongolia" to be..." Read more

"...seriously fantastic story about THE SERENDIPITY, but other stories are much more mundane, set in rural Asia on a mountaintop, or in modern day London..." Read more

"David Mitchell’s first novel is a tour de force of storytelling, a reimagining of the themes from The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a complex puzzle, and..." Read more

71 customers mention "Readability"71 positive0 negative

Customers find the book highly readable, describing it as a wonderful debut novel that is a joy to read.

"...--in general, I found the stories through "Mongolia" to be especially engaging and diverse--as Mitchell touches on a number of themes he'll explore..." Read more

"...What I can say is that it's a lot of fun and it's a joy to read...." Read more

"...Overall: Not a terrible book to read. If you are a fan of Mitchell's you will probably find some enjoyment in this book...." Read more

"...What makes this book worth reading is the investigative quality of the reading experience...." Read more

56 customers mention "Writing quality"50 positive6 negative

Customers praise the writing quality of the book, describing it as brilliantly and deeply crafted, with one customer noting its poetic style.

"...work and one that foreshadows many of the motifs, locales, and stylistic quirks that make Mitchell one of my favorite living authors...." Read more

"...Not only does it feature some of Mitchell's most beautiful writing, but it's criminally underrated in the Mitchell oeuvre...." Read more

"...His imagination is so vast and his writing skill so honed that instead of developing characters within his storyline, he actually develops his..." Read more

"Don't read this if you lack a strong thread of hope. Brilliant writing in parts. Long, slow passages. Both wonderful and appalling characters...." Read more

6 customers mention "Connectivity"6 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the connections in the book, with one noting how they are clever and unpredictable, while another highlights the global nature of these relationships.

"...There are so many connections and links between the stories, and on the second reading, knowing what and who come later, the connections are even..." Read more

"...Pretty cool. Nice to see the connections and what the charactors/(hence us) make of them... definite recommendation..." Read more

"...It captures the linkages between each of us and the decisions we make with near poetic language...." Read more

"a wonderful and intriguing novel. a tour de force on how we are all connected globally." Read more

6 customers mention "Depth"6 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the depth of the book, with one customer noting its multiple layers of meaning.

"...Very deep but enjoyable...." Read more

"Ghostwritten by David Mitchell is a rich, intricate tapestry of many lives all linked by ... well, I won't give away that mystical secret...." Read more

"...book drew me in and absorbed me with its believability, richness of description and distinctive perspective...." Read more

"This is a complex story with mulitple layers of meaning for me...." Read more

22 customers mention "Character development"14 positive8 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the character development in the book, with some praising how the characters are interwoven in deep detail, while others find them less well developed.

"...developing characters within his storyline, he actually develops his story as a character...." Read more

"...Long, slow passages. Both wonderful and appalling characters. Immensely pessimistic cornucopia of scenes with tenuous connections...." Read more

"...The connections aren't as richly thematic or as rewarding as those in Cloud Atlas, and Mitchell's ambition and writing aren't quite as astonishing,..." Read more

"...Mitchell does a great job at separating his characters via chapter divide (and locational settings), but still manages to weave their narratives..." Read more

8 customers mention "Emotional content"2 positive6 negative

Customers find the emotional content of the book dull and unconvincing.

"...The way Mitchell links the stories is more awkward and often less thematically-related than the way he is able to do in works such as Cloud Atlas..." Read more

"...in the small stories, which make up Ghostwritten, were just not particularly likable: a terrorist, a crooked banker, an art thief, a transmigrating..." Read more

"...everything: sounds, smells, movement, touching textures, feelings/emotions, and infinite views from the close-up to the telephoto-zoom; and that's..." Read more

"...dénouement, but the ending of Ghostwritten was quite perplexing and ungratifying...." Read more

5 customers mention "Pacing"0 positive5 negative

Customers find the pacing of the book unsatisfactory, with one customer noting it was slow, while others mention issues with timelines.

"...The Bad: The stories were a little too meandering with not enough time devoted to any of the stories or characters for them to ever reach greatness...." Read more

"...YES, but with caveats. There are so many books and so little time that if you are not a fan of magical realism, you might want to pass on this one." Read more

"...I did not give it five stars because I was somewhat frustrated by the timelines, its unclear if things are happening in a normal sequence or not,..." Read more

"...Honestly, though, I thought this book was slow, dull, and all over the place...." Read more

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2013
    Subtitled "A Novel in 9 Parts," Ghostwritten - the debut novel from David Mitchell - is composed of 9 short stories (and an epilogue), each told by a different narrator, set in a different time and place, and with very different stories and themes. Of course, as the subtitle suggests, the stories connect in a variety of ways, and the result is a sprawling tapestry about fate, destiny, and the reasons why our lives unfold in the ways they do. With the structure of the book being what it is, it's hard not to compare Ghostwritten to Mitchell's masterpiece Cloud Atlas, and Ghostwritten definitely suffers a little bit for the comparison. The connections aren't as richly thematic or as rewarding as those in Cloud Atlas, and Mitchell's ambition and writing aren't quite as astonishing, either. But just because Ghostwritten doesn't compare to Mitchell's later work doesn't make it a bad book by any means (after all, how many books can compare to Cloud Atlas?) . Even in this, his first effort, Mitchell's gift for creating unique characters who all have their own voice is remarkable, and the fact that he creates nine such people who each have their own compelling, moving, funny, and thrilling story is no small feat. And while Ghostwritten never quite coheres in the way that Cloud Atlas did - indeed, in many ways, it works better as a short story collection than as a novel - that doesn't make any of the pieces less engaging and rich. Whether Mitchell is telling the tale of a doomsday cult member in Tokyo or a Chinese peasant watching the revolutions pass by, whether it's the tale of a ghost writer or an actual ghost (of sorts), he creates settings that live and breathe, characters that resonate beyond their pages, and stories that absolutely propel you, through the emotions they evoke, the plots they spin, and the prose they use. It's no wonder that Ghostwritten made such a splash when it arrived on the scene, and the fact that Mitchell has only gotten better since isn't a slur against his great debut; it's just a testament to his incredible talent and gifts as a writer.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2014
    I've read all of Mitchell's novels except for number9dream, so it is a little strange to review this author's debut novel from the perspective of one who has already read his later (and unarguably better) works. As a debut novel, this is an incredible work and one that foreshadows many of the motifs, locales, and stylistic quirks that make Mitchell one of my favorite living authors. At the same time, Mitchell's immaturity comes through both in terms of style and substance throughout the book. The way Mitchell links the stories is more awkward and often less thematically-related than the way he is able to do in works such as Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks, his style is more derivative at times (the first two stories and the last felt like Mitchell was "ghostwriting" for Murakami Haruki, right down to the young man with the twin obsessions of jazz and enigmatic women, and the concern with the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway), the characters are less well developed (and occasionally veer into the annoying--I'd rather face the end of the world in silence than listen to another word from Bat Segundo, quite frankly), and the story is much more reliant on dialogue to move the plot forward compared to his later, richer prose style.

    That said, there are many things to like as well. Some stories were particularly gripping--in general, I found the stories through "Mongolia" to be especially engaging and diverse--as Mitchell touches on a number of themes he'll explore in greater depth in his later works: the predilection of man for self-destruction, issues of free will vs. fate, the excesses of capitalism, the transmutability (for lack of a better word) of the soul, etc., and, of course there are cameos from characters who appear in his other works.

    So, in the end, for someone who is new to Mitchell this book likely will be an exciting revelation. If you've read some of his other works, you might end up slightly disappointed compared to works such as Cloud Atlas, which I'd consider to be his masterpiece. I'll have to get around to number9dream, and then I'll just have to wait for whenever Mitchell comes out with a new story. But, overall, this is a good book and I'm glad I had the chance to read where it all begins for this talented author.
    10 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Ricardo Janousek
    4.0 out of 5 stars Um Mitchell pré-Cloud, mas já com um pezinho nas nuvens...
    Reviewed in Brazil on July 17, 2017
    ‘Ah, Jerry . All my ideas are the same old scam : the bigger the fib, the bigger they bite. The first shamans around the fire were in on it – they knew growing maize along the Euphrates was for mugs. Tell people that reality is exactly what it appears to be, they’ll nail you to a lump of wood. But tell ’em they can go spirit-walking while they commute, tell ’em their best friend is a lump of crystal, tell ’em the government has been negotiating with little green men for the last fifty years, then every Joe Six-Pack from Brooklyn to Peoria sits up and listens. Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a licence to print your own."

    Tão verdadeira a última sentença. E por muito pouco ela poderia ser uma descrição de Ghostwritten - um livro de história desconexa, débeis ligações entre os capítulos e uma "mensagem" qualquer perdida no meio da bagunça, da tentativa de criar uma realidade fantástica, porém bocó. Todavia, Ghostwritten foi escrito por Mitchell, e nele podemos confiar.

    Assim como fez anos depois em Atlas de nuvens, o autor fugiu à facilidade de simplesmente contar algumas histórias e tecer uma ligaçãozinha trôpega entre elas, só como uma brincadeira, só para que, ao final da leitura, seus contos ganhassem uma dimensão maior na mente do leitor por causa destas coincidências. Mitchell enveredou por um caminho que eu admiro: assumiu os riscos de criar uma trama central, nuclear, da qual todas as histórias e personagens - por mais estranhos e fechados em seu mundo que pareçam - fazem parte, ajudando a contá-la e explicitá-la. Daí a impressão final do leitor ter base para realmente ser espantosa.

    Mais do que isto, é preciso coragem para escrever algo do tipo da dimensão "etérea" da trama central - também presente em Cloud Atlas - e querer ser levado a sério. De qualquer maneira, aqui, no caso, é sucesso.

    Para quem leu Cloud Atlas antes de Ghostwritten, fica patente que o segundo é um treino para o primeiro. Um treino válido, mas, claro, bem mais pobre que o Magnum opus. Comparando-o com C.Atlas, Ghostwritten é um livro de personagens menos interessantes (com exceção à aparição de Tim Cavendish e Luisa Rey!), linguagem menos elaborada, conexões mais forçadas, estrutura menos bem pensada (a idéia "musical" da história poderia dar pano pra manga, mas é esquecida de maneira súbita, por exemplo). Tomado individualmente, Ghost é muito bom, divertido, diferente, interessante.

    É um livro que quebra preceitos da realidade para prender a atenção e focar no que importa, e faz isto com destreza. A "outra" realidade que cria é - parabéns ao autor - fantástica, porém com os pés no chão. "Disbelieving the reality under your feet gives you a licence to print your own" - de fato, e criar uma nova tão diferente, mas ainda crível, é para os fortes de caneta.
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  • E.M.
    5.0 out of 5 stars A great writer
    Reviewed in Canada on April 6, 2025
    Great writing.
  • Marco
    4.0 out of 5 stars Muy buen libro para ser el primero
    Reviewed in Spain on August 30, 2016
    He leído ya varios libros de David Mitchell y ahora me ha tocado este. Varias historias que se relacionan entre sí, algunas mejores que otras. Recomendable para entender el punto de partida de este escritor.
  • Steven James
    5.0 out of 5 stars Thematically heavy story that trips up on its brilliance
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 7, 2022
    I wanted to like this book a lot, but I am really conflicted. This is the first David Mitchell book I have managed to my teeth into, so perhaps this author is just not for me. All I can say is that there are so many interesting ideas explored here, many of a philosophical nature - questioning the beauty and chaos of humanity. 70% of the novel was a breeze, but because this is more like a collection of short stories, than I linear narrative, I still found about 30% was a real slog. I did almost give up near the end, but am glad I ploughed through. I struggled to connect all the dots in the end, but felt satisfied enough. The authors knack for creating extremely textured and engrossing worlds and characters that also seem very familiar, is astonishing. At least two chapters would make great movies, I am sure. I am a little hesitant at what to read next by Mitchell, but, I think I can overlook those few moments where I really struggled to get through the pages.
  • Jitendra Kumar Sharma
    5.0 out of 5 stars Out of the league! Extraordinary.
    Reviewed in India on May 24, 2021
    My favourite writer's favourite book.
    I wish to meet David once in this lifetime!

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