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Solo is a wonder an exploration of memory, a window on a country and region mysterious to the West even in the twentieth century, a keen study of human love and failure. Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian
With imaginative audacity and lyrical brilliance, Rana Dasgupta paints a portrait of a century through the story of a hundred-year-old blind Bulgarian man in this remarkable and dazzling debut novel.
In the first movement of Solo we meet Ulrich, the son of a railroad engineer. His passion for chemistry leads him to Berlin, but his studies are cut short when he must return to Sofia to look after his parents. He never leaves Bulgaria again. Except in his daydreams and it is those dreams we enter in the volatile second half of the book. In a radical leap from past to present, from life lived to life imagined, Dasgupta follows Ulrich s fantasy children, born of communism but making their way into a post-communist world of celebrity and violence. Intertwining science and heartbreak, the old world and the new, Solo is a virtuoso work.
A novel utterly refreshing in its blunt acknowledgment that thoroughgoing realism involves escaping reality as much as constructing it . . . What makes Mr. Dasgupta s adventurous storytelling especially rewarding is the way he carefully integrates tiny details from Ulrich s drab life into his fantasy, transfiguring them like hay spun into gold . . . Invigorating. Wall Street Journal
Rana Dasgupta was born in England. His debut collection, Tokyo Cancelled, was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; he won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Solo. Having lived in France, Malaysia, and the United States, he now makes his home in Delhi.
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Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 7759960-n
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780007182152
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.The 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. Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.The new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Tokyo Cancelled. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780007182152
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9780007182152
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Brand New. 368 pages. 7.80x5.04x1.02 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # __0007182155
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. BRAND NEW ** SUPER FAST SHIPPING FROM UK WAREHOUSE ** 30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE. Seller Inventory # 9780007182152-GDR
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Book Description Condition: New. 2010. Paperback. Winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2010. The new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Tokyo Cancelled. Num Pages: 368 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 197 x 129 x 22. Weight in Grams: 266. . . . . . Seller Inventory # V9780007182152
Book Description Condition: New. 2010. Paperback. Winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2010. The new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Tokyo Cancelled. Num Pages: 368 pages. BIC Classification: FA. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 197 x 129 x 22. Weight in Grams: 266. . . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland. Seller Inventory # V9780007182152
Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 7759960-n