Böcker av Rana Dasgupta

The transformation of Delhi into a twenty-first century metropolis is an intoxicating, at times terrifying story - that has repercussions for the future not only in India but everywhere

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.

A major international debut novel from a storyteller who couples a timelessly beguiling style to an energetically modern worldscape.Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport. Tokyo, their destination, is covered in snow and all flights are cancelled. To pass the night they form a huddle by the silent baggage carousels and tell each other stories.Robert De Niro's child, conceived in a Laundromat, masters the transubstantiation of matter and turns it against his enemies; a Ukrainian merchant is led by a wingless bird back to a lost lover; a man who edits other people's memories has to confront his own past; a Chinese youth with amazing luck cuts men's hair and cleans their ears; an entrepreneur risks losing everything in his obsession with a doll; a mute Turkish girl is left all alone in the house of German cartographer.Told by people on a journey, these are stories about lives in transit. Stories from the great cities - New York, Istanbul, Delhi, Lagos, Paris, Buenos Aires - that grow in to a novel about the hopes and dreams and disappointments that connect people everywhere.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.