Number9Dream

David Mitchell returns with a book that is in some ways even more ambitious than his startlingly precocious, world-trotting debut novel, Ghostwritten. Number9dream seems to be a Dickensian coming-of-age story: After his mother's breakdown and his sister's death, young idealist Eiji Miyake from isolated rural Japan sets out on his own and travels to Tokyo in search of his father, who abandoned him. He stumbles through and crosses many of this bizarre and amazing city's secret power centers, either by a hidden destiny or simply sheer bad luck. All of a sudden, Eiji has a growing list of pressing concerns to solve, including the mystery surrounding his father's identity. Why does it seem so difficult to distinguish between the world of his dreams and the world of his experiences? Why does he continue to experience so many terrible things? Why does the number 9 appeal to you? Eiji has to get an understanding of history and destiny that is uncommon for anybody, much alone a young man from a small town who is wanted for less than the price of a Beatles record, in order to find the answers to these questions and, in the end, accept his inheritance.