Ghostwritten was David Mitchell’s first novel, published in 1999 when its author was working as an English language teacher in Japan. It is his most important novel so far, apart from his metafictional masterpiece Cloud Atlas (2004). It was awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rees Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
Ghostwritten is subtitled A Novel in Nine Parts: each of the parts is centred on a different first-person narrator. A short tenth part reprises the voice of the first. Mitchell’s personal experience of travel, and especially of living in Japan, informs the novel: the titles of the parts refer to their widely diverse locations. In “Okinawa”…
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Citation: Stephenson, William. "Ghostwritten". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 February 2012 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24862, accessed 24 April 2024.]
