Tokyo Cancelled - Softcover

Dasgupta, Rana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007193890 ISBN 13: 9780007193899

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2005

Synopsis

Someone Spoke: I have a story to tell. Simple, just like that. THirteen passengers are stranded at an airport. Tokyo, their destination is covered in snow and all flights are cancelled.

About this title

Review:

‘Only the most gifted writers, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jonathan Safran-Foer, can hold the surreal and the real in satisfying equilibrium. This elite now welcomes Rana Dasgupta to its ranks. He makes magic realism his own, and his debut novel is superb. The novel's momentum comes from the narrators, though the plot in which they come together is deceptively mundane: their plane is grounded and they tell stories to pass the night. But this is just the structural glue for a series of spellbinding tales composed in a crisp but poetic prose which already has the hallmarks of a signature style. Dasgupta's gift for inventing stories is quite remarkable: you feel he could go on forever and never get boring. Tokyo Cancelled is profound, but in the humblest and most sensitive way. A treat.’ Andrew Staffell, Time Out 'Book of the Week'

‘Executed with elegance and charm’ The Guardian

‘This is a very bold, very striking book. In an age when so many first fictions are thinly veiled autobiography, and every other creative writing tutor is peddling the 'Write what you know' mantra, it is exceptionally refreshing to read a writer who is daring to imagine, rather than transcribe. Tokyo Cancelled is an unforgettable book, with its own peculiar charms. I shall be fascinated to see what happens next.’ Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

Synopsis:

A major international debut from a storyteller who couples a timelessly beguiling style to an energetically modern worldscape. A cluster of passengers are stranded overnight in an airport en route to Tokyo, and they tell each other stories to enliven the waiting hours, stories that mesmerize, stories that resonate. Dasgupta's writing is utterly distinctive and fresh, so striking that it seems to come from the future and the past all at once, but in marrying a timeless mystery to an alert modernity, his cautionary tales manage to be reminiscent of both Ballard and Borges, depicting ordinary extraordinary individuals (some lost, some confused, some happy) in a world that remains ineffable, inexplicable, wonderful. This is a startling debut, certain to cause quite an impact, and surely the beginning of a significant literary career.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0007193890
• ISBN 13: 9780007193899
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400