| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Solo for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'A novel of exceptional, astonishing strangeness, Solo confirms Rana Dasgupta as the most unexpected and original Indian writer of his generation.' SALMAN RUSHDIE
Praise for ‘Tokyo Cancelled’:
‘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
Product Description
The highly anticipated new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Tokyo Cancelled.
Solo recounts the life and daydreams of a reclusive one hundred year-old man from Bulgaria.
Before the man lost his sight, he read this story in a magazine: a group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by their discovery, they put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists could record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatised by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way.
Wondering if, unlike the hapless parrots, he has any wisdom to leave to the world, Ulrich embarks on an epic armchair journey through a century of violent politics, forbidden music, lost love and failed chemistry, finding his way eventually to an astonishing epiphany of tenderness and enlightenment.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
However I felt that, in some places, he was trying too hard with his 'arty' use of language and sentence structure. I found it annoying, to be honest, and it got in the way of the story. As for the second section being meant to be the dream of the main character in the first section - missed that altogether until near the end. I was confused and bemused by the jump but just waded in and followed the characters. I am, first and foremost, interested in people. Cunning and trendy plot devices are just show-boating and irritating. Makes you think about the author and not the story. And, to me, that is not the point of writing fiction...
Finally - and this is a very personal thing - as someone who gets emotionally involved in the books I read, I found it quite depressing and a struggle to get through, because really I didn't like any of the characters and so was not interested in what happened to them. Not one of them seemed to have any redeeming features: no personal insight or capacity for compassion, or learning - nothing at all. No thanks.
I would, however, have to say that the second part, which follows the tale of a musician, imagined by the protagonist in the first half, just doesn't work as well. It feels forced, unnecessary and unconvincing.
The third time I re-read this book, I just stopped at the end of the first part. Much better that way.
The second half changes gear and focuses on the eastern block becoming more westernised. For me I found the transition did not work and the flow of the first half was prematurely interrupted.
There is an ending where the two stories dove tail. Overall a good read but a book of two halfs.
I certainly preferred the life story of 100yr old Ulric as told in the first half, particularly the era of the Tsars which I had long... Read more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
