Aad van der Mijn Book order (chronological)

"Young dreamer Eiji Miyake, from remote rural Japan, thrust out on his own by his sister's death and his mother's breakdown, comes to Tokyo in pursuit of the father who abandoned him. Stumbling around this strange, awesome city, he trips over and crosses - through a hidden destiny or just monstrously bad luck - a number of its secret power centers. Suddenly, the riddle of his father's identity becomes just one of the increasingly urgent questions Eiji must answer. Why is the line between the world of his experiences and the world of his dreams so blurry? Why do so many horrible things keep happening to him? What is it about the number 9? To answer these questions, and ultimately to come to terms with his inheritance, Eiji must somehow acquire an insight into the workings of history and fate that would be rare in anyone, much less in a boy from out of town with a price on his head and less than the cost of a Beatles disc to his name."--BOOK JACKET.

Der Name Henry Smart steht für eine untergegangene Welt, deren Legenden und Mythen bis heute die irische Seele berühren und das Stadtbild Dublins prägen. Irgendwo zwischen einem übermächtigen Sternenhimmel und den düsteren Kanälen der Stadt muss der kleine Henry in einem Dubliner Armenviertel das Leben und die Liebe lernen. Schließlich pfeift er auf alles, was anderen heilig ist: Himmel und irische Erde, Kirche und Wahrheit, Familie, Ehre und Bildung, Hunger und Krieg, Macht und Angst, Leben und Tod. Abiturempfehlung zum Themenbereich Ireland

Ook de bejubelde debuutroman van deze 34-jarige Britse auteur, 'Geestesverwantschap', speelde in Japan waar hij woonde en werkte. Hoofdfiguur in zijn tweede roman, genomineerd voor de Booker-prijs, is de 20-jarige Eiji die in Tokio zijn vader gaat zoeken. Geen eenvoudige speurtocht want Eiji werd als peuter door zijn moeder in de steek gelaten, heeft zijn vader nooit ontmoet en verloor als kind ook nog zijn enige andere verwant, zijn tweelingzusje. Toch werd dit geen larmoyante vertelling maar een vinnig, wervelend, soms vermakelijk verslag van een bizarre reis door de hectische en vervreemdende ruimte die het hedendaagse Tokio vormt én door cyberspace. Herinneringen, dromen en videogames dringen de realiteit van Eijis speurtocht binnen, een tocht die voorlopig eindigt op het eiland waar alles begon. Een originele eigentijdse Bildungsroman, verpakt in een prikkelende puzzzelstructuur en geschreven in een energieke en bezwerende stijl.

By the author of THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, David Mitchell's bestselling and Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, one of Richard & Judy's 100 Books of the Decade, CLOUD ATLAS has now been adapted for film. The major motion picture, directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Grant. The novel features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation. The narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changes in ways great and small. Mitchell's other novels are GHOSTWRITTEN, BLACK SWAN GREEN and NUMBER9DREAM, all published by Sceptre.

Dublin 1994. Billy Sweeny is about to commit murder. Following a violent robbery at her workplace, his youngest daughter lies unconcious. Devastated by the event, his very sanity seems to be slipping away until fate takes a strange turn and plunges him into a blood-curdling act of vengeance.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PEN/Faulkner Award Winner • A gripping, tragic, and densely atmospheric masterpiece of courtroom suspense—one that leaves us shaken and changed. "Haunting .... A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper." —Los Angeles Times San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries—memories of a charmed love affair between a white boy and the Japanese girl who grew up to become Kabuo's wife; memories of land desired, paid for, and lost. Above all, San Piedro is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during World War II, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.