By the "New York Times "bestselling author of "The Bone Clocks" and "Cloud Atlas" "A brave new book for a brave new world--fueled by a brilliant imagination and buoyed by beautifully descriptive writing."--"USA Today" 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. Praise for "Ghostwritten "" " "[Mitchell] has a gift for fiction's natural pleasures--intricate surprises, insidiously woven narratives, ingenious voices."--"The New York Times Book Review" " " "Elegantly composed, gracefully plotted and full of humor."--"Los Angeles Times" "Unlike so many of the chroniclers of the twenty-first-century pastiche--an industry dominated by ad men and feature-writers, not novelists--Mitchell has set out to craft actual characters, not archetypes. The result is a dazzling piece o