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Dazzling
Independent on Sunday
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A delirious mix of thriller, tragedy, fantasy, video games and a portrait of uneasy modern Japan
Guardian
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Wildly inventive
Sunday Times
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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
Independent
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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
Literary Review
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I haven’t enjoyed a novel so much in ages; wild, bristling with strangeness
Independent
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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
Observer
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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
Evening Standard
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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
Daily Telegraph
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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
Times Literary Supplement
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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
Guardian
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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
Big Issue
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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
Irish Times
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He is a very energised and original sentence architect who elevates the steaming, fizzing city of Tokyo into a city of the imagination . . . a gifted and unusual writer
The Times
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Superlative
Sunday Telegraph
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A novel as accomplished as anything being written. Funny, tenderhearted and horrifying, often all at once, it refashions the rudiments of the coming-of-age novel into something completely original
Newsweek
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number9dream, with its propulsive energy, its Joycean eruption of language and playfulness, represents further confirmation that David Mitchell should be counted among the top young novelists working today . . . He writes like a dream, the kind you don’t want to end
San Francisco Chronicle
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Delirious – a grand blur of overwhelming sensation
Entertainment Weekly
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Mitchell’s new novel has been described as a cross between Don DeLillo and William Gibson, and although that’s a perfectly serviceable cocktail-party formula, it doesn’t do justice to this odd, fitfully compelling work
New Yorker
