Solo - Hardcover

Dasgupta, Rana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0547397089 ISBN 13: 9780547397085

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

Synopsis

With an imaginative audacity and lyrical brilliance that puts him in the company of David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, Rana Dasgupta paints a portrait of a century though the story of a hundred-year-old blind Bulgarian man in a first novel that announces the arrival of an exhilarating new voice in fiction.

In the first movement of Solo we meet Ulrich, the son of a railroad engineer, who has two great passions: the violin and chemistry. Denied the first by his father, he leaves for the Berlin of Einstein and Fritz Haber to study the latter. His studies are cut short when his father’s fortune evaporates, and he must return to Sofia to look after his parents. He never leaves Bulgaria again. Except in his daydreams—and it is those dreams we enter in the volatile second half of the book. In a radical leap from past to present, from life lived to life imagined, Dasgupta follows Ulrich’s fantasy children, born of communism but making their way into a post-communist world of celebrity and violence.

Intertwining science and heartbreak, the old world and the new, the real and imagined, Solo is a virtuoso work.

“Utterly unforgettable in its humanity.” —The Guardian

About this title

Review:

'A novel of exceptional, astonishing strangeness, Solo confirms Rana Dasgupta as the most unexpected and original Indian writer of his generation.' SALMAN RUSHDIE

From the Back Cover:

Solo is a wonder an exploration of memory, a window on a country and region mysterious to the West even in the twentieth century, a keen study of human love and failure. Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian
With imaginative audacity and lyrical brilliance, Rana Dasgupta paints a portrait of a century through the story of a hundred-year-old blind Bulgarian man in this remarkable and dazzling debut novel.
In the first movement of Solo we meet Ulrich, the son of a railroad engineer. His passion for chemistry leads him to Berlin, but his studies are cut short when he must return to Sofia to look after his parents. He never leaves Bulgaria again. Except in his daydreams and it is those dreams we enter in the volatile second half of the book. In a radical leap from past to present, from life lived to life imagined, Dasgupta follows Ulrich s fantasy children, born of communism but making their way into a post-communist world of celebrity and violence. Intertwining science and heartbreak, the old world and the new, Solo is a virtuoso work.
A novel utterly refreshing in its blunt acknowledgment that thoroughgoing realism involves escaping reality as much as constructing it . . . What makes Mr. Dasgupta s adventurous storytelling especially rewarding is the way he carefully integrates tiny details from Ulrich s drab life into his fantasy, transfiguring them like hay spun into gold . . . Invigorating. Wall Street Journal
Rana Dasgupta was born in England. His debut collection, Tokyo Cancelled, was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; he won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Solo. Having lived in France, Malaysia, and the United States, he now makes his home in Delhi.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0547397089
• ISBN 13: 9780547397085
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 339