I have read a few good books (not that I read many, especially of late) but this 1999 debut by David Mitchell (no, not the comedian!) takes (took?) the cake. Ghostwritten was a birthday gift from Jimbo seven years ago. And true to fashion, I merely finished it in the first quarter of this year. And that was after only picking it up late last year. Yes, shameful really. The book comprises a compendium of seemingly different stories, but are somehow intertwined. The best bit is, the individual stories are different in genre and some are not in the same timeline.

We are introduced to a character who was involved in a cult that released nerve gas in a Tokyo subway (likely inspired by true events related to the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack in 1995). This is followed by a tale of a jazz enthusiast-cum-record shop worker falling in love with a girl. Without telling too much, the book also has stories of an English lawyer in Hong Kong involved in shady financial dealings, a Chinese woman who runs a tea shop at the bottom of a mountain, a restless transmigrating spirit running around in Mongolia, art theft in a museum in St. Petersburg, a ghostwriter (finally a link to the title) in London with commitment issues, a techno-thriller involving an Irish scientist on the run from the men in suits and a radio show by a DJ in New York. Random, huh?

Ghostwritten as a debut was impressive enough to have received the John Llewellyn Rhys prize (one of the previous winners was V.S. Naipaul), one of the oldest literary awards in the UK.

On a separate yet connected note, it appears that Mitchell’s other opus, Cloud Atlas, has a similar theme of things being interlinked. I was recently informed by Jimbo that Cloud Atlas has been made into a film due to be released in the UK in February 2013. Interestingly, I had bought Cloud Atlas during the time I was still reading Ghostwritten. Now, it is somewhat imperative that I finish Cloud before the start of the next year! Have a butcher’s at the trailer.

I think the film looks mighty impressive and am so looking forward to finishing the book (done the first 20-odd pages which has been gripping thus far)!