A magnificent achievement and an utterly engrossing experience, Ghostwritten is a novel set at the fugitive edges of Asia and Europe, featuring a whole host of characters. An apocalyptic cult member carries out a gas attack on a rush-hour metro, but what connects him to a jazz buff in downtown Tokyo? A woman on a holy mountain talks to a tree – and the tree talks back – unaware of the effect the financial irregularities of a burnt-out lawyer will have on her life. A Mongolian gangster, a redundant English spy in Saint Petersburg with a knack for forging masterpieces, a despondent ‘zookeeper’, a nuclear scientist, a ghostwriter, a ghost, and a late night New York DJ whose hard-boiled scepticism has been his undoing – all have tales to tell.

Add to this saxophones and causality, Buddha, cherry blossoms, island cities, a mind unhooked from memory, the Trans Siberian Express, hidden narratives of the new world’s order, circles and roulette in London, ‘The White Album’, Baggins the Tarantula and a quantum computer born one century ahead of its time. All elements are interconnected and each character must play their part as they are caught up in the inescapable forces of cause and effect.