Tokyo Cancelled

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 ld by a wingless bird back to a lost lover; a man who edits over 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 with a doll; a mute Turkish girl is left all alone in the house of a 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 into a novel about the hopes and dreams and disappointments that connect people everywhere. Tokyo Cancelled, Rana Dasgupta’s extraordinary first novel, is a map of the world, and the profusion of stories that underpins it, quite unlike any other.