Tokyo Cancelled
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Thirteen strangers stranded in an Asian airport spin tales that “outdo Arabian Nights for inventiveness” in this debut novel (The Guardian).
Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport. Tokyo, their destination, is covered in snow and all flights are cancelled. To pass the night they huddle by the baggage carousels and tell each other stories. So begins Tokyo Cancelled, a unique literary adventure that combines a modern landscape with a timeless, fairy-tale ethos. In his delightful debut, Dasgupta brings to life a cast of extraordinary individuals—some lost, some confused, some happy—in a world that remains ineffable, inexplicable, and wonderful.
A Ukrainian merchant is led by a wingless bird back to a lost lover; Robert De Niro’s son masters the transubstantiation of matter and turns it against his enemies; a man who manipulates other people’s memories has to confront his own past; a Japanese entrepreneur risks everything in his obsession with a doll; a mute Turkish girl has a strange encounter with a German man who is mapping the world.
Told by people on a journey, these stories “tackle themes of transit, dislocation and uprootedness” in a “sprawling, experimental project achieves an exotic luster” (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dasgupta spins a self-consciously modern tapestry of freewheeling fantasies and subverted fairy tales with his ambitious first book. When a severe blizzard in Tokyo diverts a 747 to a remote airport, the stranded passengers gather around the baggage carousel to trade the sort of stories that strangers don't typically swap, unless one's fellow travelers are Beckett and Borges. Refracting the contemporary world's metropolises through a dystopian once-upon-a-time sensibility, Dasgupta tackles themes of transit, dislocation and uprootedness. His critique of consumerism and the global economy can be humorous: in "The Store on Madison Avenue," Robert de Niro's half-Chinese illegitimate son, Pavel, unites with Martin Scorsese and Isabella Rossellini's love child, who eats a magic box of Oreo cookies that transforms her into an upscale New York boutique. Dasgupta takes a more didactic tone in "The Memory Editor," about the prodigal son of an investment banker who goes to work for a corporate enterprise called "MyPast ," which gathers and markets ejected memories when a London of the near future literally loses its sense of history. Other tales discover poignant moments of connection, as when a wingless bird hobbles across Europe to reunite two lost lovers. Though Dasgupta's postmodern stories can be too pat, his sprawling, experimental project achieves an exotic luster.
