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Tokyo Uçuşu İptal
Hava koşulları yüzünden başka bir şehre mecburi iniş yapan Tokyo uçağının yolcularının büyük kısmı otellere yerleştirilir, ama on üç yolcu yer sıkıntısından dolayı havaalanında sabahlamak zorunda kalır. Hiç tanımadığınız bir grup insanla kapalı bir alanda mahsur kaldığınızda, zamanın geçmesini sağlamak için yapabileceğiniz en eğlenceli şey nedir peki? Tabii ki hikâyeler anlatmak!
Boccaccio'nun Decameron'u ve Chaucer'ın Canterbury Hikâyeleri’ninkine benzer bir ruhla yazılmış olan Tokyo Uçuşu İptal, dünyanın farklı köşelerinde, birbirinden çok farklı karakterlerin başından geçen ilginç olayları anlatan on üç hikâyeden oluşuyor. Gerçekçiliğin katı kuralları yerine hayal gücünün kural tanımazlığının hüküm sürdüğü bu hikâyeler büyüklere yönelik modern zaman masalları olarak da görülebilir. Ama her şeyin tozpembe olduğu ve kahramanların sonsuza kadar mutlu yaşadığı masallar değil bunlar; aksine, tutkuları ve zaaflarıyla insan ruhunun karanlık yönlerini eşeleyen, olayların hiç de beklendiği gibi gelişmediği, kaderin cilve ve silleleriyle örülü masallar.
Daha önce Solo adlı romanını yayımladığımız Hint asıllı Britanyalı yazar Rana Dasgupta'nın ustalıklı bir dille kaleme aldığı bu eğlenceli kitap, tarihin kendisi kadar eski olan hikâye anlatma geleneğine de bir saygı duruşu...
Boccaccio'nun Decameron'u ve Chaucer'ın Canterbury Hikâyeleri’ninkine benzer bir ruhla yazılmış olan Tokyo Uçuşu İptal, dünyanın farklı köşelerinde, birbirinden çok farklı karakterlerin başından geçen ilginç olayları anlatan on üç hikâyeden oluşuyor. Gerçekçiliğin katı kuralları yerine hayal gücünün kural tanımazlığının hüküm sürdüğü bu hikâyeler büyüklere yönelik modern zaman masalları olarak da görülebilir. Ama her şeyin tozpembe olduğu ve kahramanların sonsuza kadar mutlu yaşadığı masallar değil bunlar; aksine, tutkuları ve zaaflarıyla insan ruhunun karanlık yönlerini eşeleyen, olayların hiç de beklendiği gibi gelişmediği, kaderin cilve ve silleleriyle örülü masallar.
Daha önce Solo adlı romanını yayımladığımız Hint asıllı Britanyalı yazar Rana Dasgupta'nın ustalıklı bir dille kaleme aldığı bu eğlenceli kitap, tarihin kendisi kadar eski olan hikâye anlatma geleneğine de bir saygı duruşu...
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
83 people are currently reading
1095 people want to read
About the author
Rana Dasgupta
14 books151 followersRana Dasgupta is a British-Indian writer. He grew up in Cambridge, England and studied at Balliol College, Oxford, the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He lives in Delhi, India.
His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled (2005), was an examination of the forces and experiences of globalization. Billed as a modern-day Canterbury Tales, thirteen passengers stuck overnight in an airport tell thirteen stories from different cities in the world, stories that resemble contemporary fairytales, mythic and surreal. The tales add up to a broad exploration of 21st century forms of life, which includes billionaires, film stars, migrant labourers, illegal immigrants and sailors. [1] Tokyo Cancelled was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Dasgupta's second novel, Solo (2009) is an epic tale of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries told from the perspective of a one hundred-year old Bulgarian man. Having achieved little in his twentieth-century life, he settles into a long and prophetic daydream of the twenty-first century, where all the ideological experiments of the old century are over, and a collection of startling characters - demons and angels - live a life beyond utopia.
His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled (2005), was an examination of the forces and experiences of globalization. Billed as a modern-day Canterbury Tales, thirteen passengers stuck overnight in an airport tell thirteen stories from different cities in the world, stories that resemble contemporary fairytales, mythic and surreal. The tales add up to a broad exploration of 21st century forms of life, which includes billionaires, film stars, migrant labourers, illegal immigrants and sailors. [1] Tokyo Cancelled was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Dasgupta's second novel, Solo (2009) is an epic tale of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries told from the perspective of a one hundred-year old Bulgarian man. Having achieved little in his twentieth-century life, he settles into a long and prophetic daydream of the twenty-first century, where all the ideological experiments of the old century are over, and a collection of startling characters - demons and angels - live a life beyond utopia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 180 reviews
April 8, 2012
Three words for the author: lose the magic.
Oh, and the sex. OK, that’s six words. Not as dramatic. Can’t be helped.
Lose the magic. I really wanted to like this book, because I saw the author speak and he said a lot of things I agree with about the negative effects of ”writing what you know”, for example, all those tedious novels and short stories about unhappy English professors and unhappy participants in graduate school writing seminars. I was disappointed because I wanted to see this opinion fleshed out in an effective manner. I was doubly disappointed because this book also seemed to come with a promising High Concept (a series of stories told by people waiting in an airport to pass the time), which would allow the author to be able to show off his stylistic chops by writing in an entertaining variety of voices.
But, alas, all the stories are told in the same ”once upon a time” voice, which is OK the first or second time but loses interest on the fifth or sixth appearance. Even the plots have a certain sameness about them, as they all start out within one standard deviation of normal and get progressively more bizarre, with magical and/or grotesque elements introduced to no apparent purpose or internal consistency except, sometimes, to get the author out of the narrative corner he’s written himself into. An example: in one story, the author for narrative purposes needs to get a Turkish girl from the Turkey to Germany. Presumably to avoid getting sidetracked on a lot of unimportant details about visas, he says that she came through a magical underground hole from Turkey to Germany, which is apparently unknown to anyone else, before and after, and is not used or mentioned again.
Please take my word for it that there are many further examples of this type of thing.
I’ve read the second novel by this same writer. Like this one, the introduction of fantasy elements sent the story completely off the rails. I’d love to see this writer try something completely based in observable lived experience, meaning, no convenient magic tunnels. Not even one.
And the sex. I thought that the brother-sister incest early in the book would be the most cringe-worthy sex scene. I had underestimated the author because, later on, there is a scene between Robert DeNiro and a Chinese laundress, and, after that, there is a scene between a Japanese entrepreneur and the sex doll he constructs out of prosthetic body parts, both of which are even sillier. It is difficult to tell why these scenes take place. Are they supposed to showcase the writer’s ability? Did the publisher cynically demand sex scenes to boost sales? Perhaps scenes like this were designed with the intention of shocking me out of my bourgeois complacency, but be assured that my bourgeois complacency, made of very durable materials indeed, continues to envelope me like a great comfortable fuzzy blanket.
I probably appear to be some sort of decrepit killjoy, taking mean-spirited pleasure in bashing a writer’s uninhibited creativity. I can only reply: that’s ”Mister Killjoy” to you, friend.
Oh, and the sex. OK, that’s six words. Not as dramatic. Can’t be helped.
Lose the magic. I really wanted to like this book, because I saw the author speak and he said a lot of things I agree with about the negative effects of ”writing what you know”, for example, all those tedious novels and short stories about unhappy English professors and unhappy participants in graduate school writing seminars. I was disappointed because I wanted to see this opinion fleshed out in an effective manner. I was doubly disappointed because this book also seemed to come with a promising High Concept (a series of stories told by people waiting in an airport to pass the time), which would allow the author to be able to show off his stylistic chops by writing in an entertaining variety of voices.
But, alas, all the stories are told in the same ”once upon a time” voice, which is OK the first or second time but loses interest on the fifth or sixth appearance. Even the plots have a certain sameness about them, as they all start out within one standard deviation of normal and get progressively more bizarre, with magical and/or grotesque elements introduced to no apparent purpose or internal consistency except, sometimes, to get the author out of the narrative corner he’s written himself into. An example: in one story, the author for narrative purposes needs to get a Turkish girl from the Turkey to Germany. Presumably to avoid getting sidetracked on a lot of unimportant details about visas, he says that she came through a magical underground hole from Turkey to Germany, which is apparently unknown to anyone else, before and after, and is not used or mentioned again.
Please take my word for it that there are many further examples of this type of thing.
I’ve read the second novel by this same writer. Like this one, the introduction of fantasy elements sent the story completely off the rails. I’d love to see this writer try something completely based in observable lived experience, meaning, no convenient magic tunnels. Not even one.
And the sex. I thought that the brother-sister incest early in the book would be the most cringe-worthy sex scene. I had underestimated the author because, later on, there is a scene between Robert DeNiro and a Chinese laundress, and, after that, there is a scene between a Japanese entrepreneur and the sex doll he constructs out of prosthetic body parts, both of which are even sillier. It is difficult to tell why these scenes take place. Are they supposed to showcase the writer’s ability? Did the publisher cynically demand sex scenes to boost sales? Perhaps scenes like this were designed with the intention of shocking me out of my bourgeois complacency, but be assured that my bourgeois complacency, made of very durable materials indeed, continues to envelope me like a great comfortable fuzzy blanket.
I probably appear to be some sort of decrepit killjoy, taking mean-spirited pleasure in bashing a writer’s uninhibited creativity. I can only reply: that’s ”Mister Killjoy” to you, friend.
February 23, 2008
AAAAAHHHH! Six stars! Perhaps seven. I've never read anygoddamn thing close to this book, and I doubt you have either. Do your self a favor. RIGHT NOW
April 5, 2017
Allahım birbirinden tuhaf 13 öykü var kitapta. Bazılarına bayıldım, bazıları konusunda ne düşüneceğimi bilemedim, Japonlar çılgın vesaire vesaire
November 17, 2017
So I recently read Tokyo cancelled, rather finished it.
I was reading it for a while now. It had about thirteen short stories, all told by different people who get stranded in a place because their flight gets cancelled.
At first it was a light read. I usually am not the sort of person who would read short stories, but these fit well with me. After a certain point the magical realism got to me.
Some stories were rushed and written in haste, whereas others were long and dragged. There were beautiful and innovative stories as well. Very evocative and mention worthy but most stories were just stories.
There was nothing more to them. The stories also had the same tone. Sometimes the style or the vantage point changed but mostly they were just stagnant. I had hoped to like this book and I did too, but not as much as I'd heard about it.
If you're looking for good magical realism stories, this is a recommendation. But if too much magical realism is a lot effort then I'd recommend to pair the read with another book.
I was reading it for a while now. It had about thirteen short stories, all told by different people who get stranded in a place because their flight gets cancelled.
At first it was a light read. I usually am not the sort of person who would read short stories, but these fit well with me. After a certain point the magical realism got to me.
Some stories were rushed and written in haste, whereas others were long and dragged. There were beautiful and innovative stories as well. Very evocative and mention worthy but most stories were just stories.
There was nothing more to them. The stories also had the same tone. Sometimes the style or the vantage point changed but mostly they were just stagnant. I had hoped to like this book and I did too, but not as much as I'd heard about it.
If you're looking for good magical realism stories, this is a recommendation. But if too much magical realism is a lot effort then I'd recommend to pair the read with another book.
February 14, 2015
A few stories were nice. Most were weird and frankly, gross. And I have to analyze them in class later.
July 23, 2007
One of the rare books I chose not to finish. The more time and thought I invested into these short stories, the less rewarded I felt. The concept of the book intrigued me, but each story became progressively creepier and more disturbing.
I believe I closed this book for the final time after completing the story in which a young woman eats a magic Oreo and becomes a clothing store.
I believe I closed this book for the final time after completing the story in which a young woman eats a magic Oreo and becomes a clothing store.
January 8, 2011
Stories within a story, this book featured 13 stories as told by 13 stranded travelers when their flight to Tokyo was canceled due to an epic snowstorm. These tourists, looking to pass the time and recognizing the need for companionship and understanding that they need to get along with each other, if only for a few hours until their flight resumes, tells stories to each other as a means of entertainment.
The stories and the order in which they were told are as follows:
The Tailor
The Memory Editor
The Billionaire's Sleep
The House of the Frankfurt Mapmaker
The Store on Madison Avenue
The Flyover
The Speed Bump
The Doll
The Rendezvous in Istanbul
The Changeling
The Bargain in the Dungeon
The Lucky Ear Cleaner
The Recycler of Dreams
The stories remind me of how children would make stories on their own, which starts very interesting then changes to the odd and quirky as it progresses, to something downright impossible. Outrageously out of this world, sometimes vague and ambiguous, sometimes schizophrenic. The reader, depending upon his/her preference, would either be amazed at the work of pure imagination and ingenuity of the author to have written such stories, or would feel lost amidst the seemingly improbable to the downright grotesque writing. For my part, this is a go-to book for weirdly gripping tales - tall tales for the adult readers, told and read for the sake of telling and reading a story.
The first few stories were interesting, the writing and language well-used and very intelligible. However, I can't help but think that digression has been present on almost all stories, focus lost on the main issues of the plot and the characters and instead the flow shifts directions into the bizarre. Not just once did I get grossed out on some scenes, and although they could have been very dramatic and imaginative, I can't help thinking that most were just an amalgamation of the classic fairy tales set in an ultra-modern setting, with strange and disturbing twists, and with only moral lessons revealed.
I read in some reviews that this book compares to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or to the Arabian Nights, and although some stories do make some sense, comparing it to the above classics is too much. I remembered studying those stories in school and I've always been so fascinated with them. They teach a lot of virtues and the adventures were vividly and thoughtfully written. The stories in Tokyo Cancelled on the other hand, I could not imagine doing a paper on, let alone reading it in class.
Overall, I would reiterate what I said above: The stories within this book are, in my opinion, as good as short stories could go. A reader may find him/herself swimming in an ocean of words and loving every minute of it, or getting drowned with bizarre and conflicting storylines. It all depends upon how much his/her imagination can take and how much he/she can allow to get in his/her head.
The stories and the order in which they were told are as follows:
The Tailor
The Memory Editor
The Billionaire's Sleep
The House of the Frankfurt Mapmaker
The Store on Madison Avenue
The Flyover
The Speed Bump
The Doll
The Rendezvous in Istanbul
The Changeling
The Bargain in the Dungeon
The Lucky Ear Cleaner
The Recycler of Dreams
The stories remind me of how children would make stories on their own, which starts very interesting then changes to the odd and quirky as it progresses, to something downright impossible. Outrageously out of this world, sometimes vague and ambiguous, sometimes schizophrenic. The reader, depending upon his/her preference, would either be amazed at the work of pure imagination and ingenuity of the author to have written such stories, or would feel lost amidst the seemingly improbable to the downright grotesque writing. For my part, this is a go-to book for weirdly gripping tales - tall tales for the adult readers, told and read for the sake of telling and reading a story.
The first few stories were interesting, the writing and language well-used and very intelligible. However, I can't help but think that digression has been present on almost all stories, focus lost on the main issues of the plot and the characters and instead the flow shifts directions into the bizarre. Not just once did I get grossed out on some scenes, and although they could have been very dramatic and imaginative, I can't help thinking that most were just an amalgamation of the classic fairy tales set in an ultra-modern setting, with strange and disturbing twists, and with only moral lessons revealed.
I read in some reviews that this book compares to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or to the Arabian Nights, and although some stories do make some sense, comparing it to the above classics is too much. I remembered studying those stories in school and I've always been so fascinated with them. They teach a lot of virtues and the adventures were vividly and thoughtfully written. The stories in Tokyo Cancelled on the other hand, I could not imagine doing a paper on, let alone reading it in class.
Overall, I would reiterate what I said above: The stories within this book are, in my opinion, as good as short stories could go. A reader may find him/herself swimming in an ocean of words and loving every minute of it, or getting drowned with bizarre and conflicting storylines. It all depends upon how much his/her imagination can take and how much he/she can allow to get in his/her head.
December 18, 2012
I got this book largely because of its average rating on this site and the reviews that I skimmed through. Modern Canterbury Tales + a dash of Marquez? Hell yeah, sign me up!
I was sorely disappointed. I thought he finally had something midway through the third story, but that eventually fell flat. I forced myself through the rest of the book, thinking that maybe I just didn't "get" it, hoping to find SOMETHING. There was nothing, except the constant promise of something wondrous and profound that, unfortunately, is never delivered on.
With writers like Marquez or Murakami, bizarre twists add something to the story in terms of plot, theme, or simple entertainment value. Dasgupta's constant plot twists, however, seem to be weird for the sake of being weird. Good magic realism, in my experience, leads you by the hand through a labyrinth of the fantastic, helping you feel like each ridiculous turn is the only right way to some ultimate destination. It does not leave you rolling your eyes at how hard the author is trying to make all the little details seem more meaningful than they are.
One peculiarity that I found in the stories is Dasgupta's seeming infatuation with mentioning the more popular luxury brands. Maybe this is a commentary on globalization and modern excess, I don't know. Like every other spark of actual depth in the book, this also falls flat. Well, like I said, maybe I just don't get it.
I was sorely disappointed. I thought he finally had something midway through the third story, but that eventually fell flat. I forced myself through the rest of the book, thinking that maybe I just didn't "get" it, hoping to find SOMETHING. There was nothing, except the constant promise of something wondrous and profound that, unfortunately, is never delivered on.
With writers like Marquez or Murakami, bizarre twists add something to the story in terms of plot, theme, or simple entertainment value. Dasgupta's constant plot twists, however, seem to be weird for the sake of being weird. Good magic realism, in my experience, leads you by the hand through a labyrinth of the fantastic, helping you feel like each ridiculous turn is the only right way to some ultimate destination. It does not leave you rolling your eyes at how hard the author is trying to make all the little details seem more meaningful than they are.
One peculiarity that I found in the stories is Dasgupta's seeming infatuation with mentioning the more popular luxury brands. Maybe this is a commentary on globalization and modern excess, I don't know. Like every other spark of actual depth in the book, this also falls flat. Well, like I said, maybe I just don't get it.
October 3, 2015
Most of these short stories (with the exception of the Detroit one, I'd argue) feel like they could fit really nice on tor.com. That is to say they are beautiful scifi shorts. Some of them break hearts, some don't. The most brilliant thing about the book, though, is how after the 13th story there appeared a connection, a good connection, among the seemingly independent stories. It is beautiful, that's all I can say.
April 10, 2007
Dasgupta loves the organic; somehow many stories involve the merging of the living with the inanimate or the startling combination of life forms; buildings that are alive or grow things, animals that communicate or people that sprout plants... lots and lots of body fluids... his stories repulse more than resonate.
July 26, 2007
This is a clever (albeit quirky) compilation of short stories told by a bunch of people trying to pass the time while stranded at an airport. Some of the stories are more understandable/likeable than others, but each one is interesting in its own way. And there's something for everyone within these pages. Magical cookies, weird life-size dolls, changelings, and hot sex -- what's not to love?
September 25, 2007
Astonishingly creative, bizarre, folkloric, surreal, and vivid. I'm amazed at how RD was able to collude such farflung locales. I didn't think all the stories were even, but each one of them was raptly engaging, sometimes thrilling in its forward motion. A bit of a preoccupation on the darker bodily acts, but thoroughly enjoyable throughout.
November 13, 2012
I had read praise for Rana Dasgupta's other book, Solo, in Indian media sometime back but as I am a bit skeptical about Indian media praising NRI-writers in the vein of "prodigal son returns" so never picked it up. This book, his very first, I found in a book sale and I am quite glad that I did pick it up. This is less of a novel and more of a short-story collection loosely based on a canterbury-tales premise of stranded travellers telling stories to pass the night. The tales are like modern parables with a rich dose of the magic-realism and sci-fi settings woven into more traditional story forms. I think if a Scheherazade existed in the modern times, these are the stories she would tell. Not all the stories work and the cyclic return to the airport feels a bit contrived mostly. But all the stories are imaginative telling of the human condition, sometimes hopeful mostly bleak and occasionally wistful. Each story is set in a different part of the world but in contemporary times. I don't know if it is by designer not but their is a globalised uniformity to the characters so that they could have easily exchanged places without altering the storyline, the local impinges so very little on them. Istanbul could have been Delhi could have been Buenos Aires...
There is a rawness to the style but then it is a first novel. And I like it enough to go pick up the second.
There is a rawness to the style but then it is a first novel. And I like it enough to go pick up the second.
May 30, 2016
WTF? Like seriously, WTF? I got through the first 4 short stories and had to put the book down and read some reviews. Surely I was missing something? Surely I wasn't getting the genius symbolism?! Nope. The author is just an oddball. So I won't be bothering to finish.
Like other reviewers, this book makes no sense to me. It's full of all these "magical" twists and turns which make no sense and don't even improve the story.
Dasgupta totally lost me when a story about a mute girl in Germany suddenly became about monkey killing. Like, why?!
Excuse me second hand book store owner, I would like my dollar back!!!
Like other reviewers, this book makes no sense to me. It's full of all these "magical" twists and turns which make no sense and don't even improve the story.
Dasgupta totally lost me when a story about a mute girl in Germany suddenly became about monkey killing. Like, why?!
Excuse me second hand book store owner, I would like my dollar back!!!
January 4, 2008
13 travelers get stranded in an airport when their flight to Tokyo is diverted, so they pass the night telling each other stories.
This was billed as a modern Canterbury Tales and someone suggested it for book club. Our general consensus was that it was "weird". Some of the stories were interesting, but some were so off the wall I didn't really relate to or appreciate them. Overall the writing was good, but I'm not sure I'd recommend this book or ever read it again.
This was billed as a modern Canterbury Tales and someone suggested it for book club. Our general consensus was that it was "weird". Some of the stories were interesting, but some were so off the wall I didn't really relate to or appreciate them. Overall the writing was good, but I'm not sure I'd recommend this book or ever read it again.
February 18, 2012
Няма да дочета тази книга. Между разказите няма никаква смислова връзка, освен натрапчивият стремеж да бъдат колкото се може по-абсурдни и невероятни. Очевидно е търсен паралел с "Хиляда и една нощ", само дето Рана Дасгупта не е Шехеразада:-)). Не ми понася този тип писане. Това, че не мога да намеря никакъв смисъл и идея в историите, ме влудява. Друго също не намирам- нито кой знае какъв стил, нито интересна изразност....Дотук с този писател.
May 28, 2014
Нали всичко е по-бързо, по-синтезирано и по-объркано в днешно време...
Ето защо Шехерезада днес се казва Рана Дасгупта, а нейните хиляда и една нощи са се сгушили в една конкретна нощ из някакво неизвестно летище в името на един отменен полет до Токио.
И така се ражда роман, с който съм извънредно щастлива, че се срещнах и от днес завиждам на всеки, на когото тепърва предстои да го прочете за пръв път.
Ето защо Шехерезада днес се казва Рана Дасгупта, а нейните хиляда и една нощи са се сгушили в една конкретна нощ из някакво неизвестно летище в името на един отменен полет до Токио.
И така се ражда роман, с който съм извънредно щастлива, че се срещнах и от днес завиждам на всеки, на когото тепърва предстои да го прочете за пръв път.
June 22, 2012
i love this book SO MUCH. kinda like magic realism. kinda like twisted fairy tales. kinda like the arabian nights--especially how the stories are framed as bits within a larger narrative. however, it's deeper that than insofar as the short stories speak to each other. i need to spend more time analyzing the meaning of that...
May 17, 2007
Modern Day Canterbury Tales.
Absolutely loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
June 19, 2011
Magical. Marquez-like and Rushdie-inspired, just wonderful!
July 11, 2011
Terrifically creative. Every turn will surprise you.
November 26, 2017
Some were brilliant but some were too mundane :(. Overall an enjoyable collection of magical realism stories.
March 30, 2020
Review originally posted to Eve's Alexandria, 2013.
--
I love Rana Dasgupta's dazzling (and often gleefully surreal) story-suite Tokyo Cancelled. The frame-tale has a group of passengers stranded in an airport overnight, after bad weather sees all flights to Tokyo cancelled. As the initial annoyance and worry fades, the group's minds turn to how they might pass the time. Dasgupta does a skilled job of sketching the dynamics of the crowd and its skittering trains of thought through playful metaphor and snatches of half-heard dialogue. Like Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims or Calvino's castle guests, the travellers hit upon storytelling as a solution. Someone feebly protests that they don't know any stories, to which someone else fires back, all run-on sentences in his breathless enthusiasm,
Everyone knows stories! I just told you I slept in the same bed as my wife every night for the last fifteen years in the same bedroom of the same flat in the same suburb of Tokyo - and look at all you different people! You just have to tell me how you travel to work every morning in the place where you live and for me it's a fable! it's a legend! Sorry I am tired and a little stressed and this is not how I usually talk but I think when you are together like this then stories are what is required.
Someone spoke: I have a story I can tell.
Simple, just like that.
And just like that, a treasure trove of Story is opened to us. Befitting the airport setting, the settings range wildly - Paris, Delhi, Frankfurt, Istanbul, New York, Lagos - but certain key themes and motifs are shared. One of these is the crossing of boundaries: between countries, between individuals, between inside and outside, between sleeping and waking, between the body and its surroundings.
In 'The Billionaire's Sleep', for example, we meet a captain of industry named Rajiv Malhotra, who is locked in a feverish need for constant activity. When he tries to sleep, "horizontality" proves to be "some kind of strange excitant that would send his exhausted mind scampering aimlessly around labyrinths of irrelevant problems to which he needed no solution". Searching for fresh stimulation - and for something on which to spend his money - he pays for an experimental treatment to create clones of himself and his wife, to give them the children they have never managed to have. Naturally, this being a sort of fairytale, they get twins; equally naturally, to Rajiv's horror, one twin is adorable perfection while the other is born "shrunken, misshapen". He orders what he calls the "creature" removed from his sight - a retainer ensures the boy is raised, in safety and love, far away - and takes his perfect daughter home, where she rejuvenates all who see her with how pretty and content she looks.
As Sapna grows up, however, it becomes apparent that her rejuvenating effects are not confined to people, or indeed to animate objects at all. In a lovely, surreal passage, we're shown how, all around her, things spontaneously grow:
[A] morning visit was met by a room full of white seeds that drifted lazily on the air currents from floor to ceiling, spores emitted by the geometric rows of spiralling grasses that had sprung overnight from the antique Persian rug on the floor of Sapna's room. [...] They moved her into another bedroom, where a wicker laundry basket burst overnight into a clump of bamboo-like spears that grew through the ceiling and erupted into the room above.
(The rest is going under a spoiler tag, just in case.)
There are 13 stories in all; some are less successful, but most are still hugely enjoyable. The whole thing is endlessly imaginative and marvellous fun, deftly negotiating an impressive variety of styles and tones - and drawing on a wide range of global storytelling traditions - in the creation of modern fables. Highly recommended.
--
I love Rana Dasgupta's dazzling (and often gleefully surreal) story-suite Tokyo Cancelled. The frame-tale has a group of passengers stranded in an airport overnight, after bad weather sees all flights to Tokyo cancelled. As the initial annoyance and worry fades, the group's minds turn to how they might pass the time. Dasgupta does a skilled job of sketching the dynamics of the crowd and its skittering trains of thought through playful metaphor and snatches of half-heard dialogue. Like Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims or Calvino's castle guests, the travellers hit upon storytelling as a solution. Someone feebly protests that they don't know any stories, to which someone else fires back, all run-on sentences in his breathless enthusiasm,
Everyone knows stories! I just told you I slept in the same bed as my wife every night for the last fifteen years in the same bedroom of the same flat in the same suburb of Tokyo - and look at all you different people! You just have to tell me how you travel to work every morning in the place where you live and for me it's a fable! it's a legend! Sorry I am tired and a little stressed and this is not how I usually talk but I think when you are together like this then stories are what is required.
Someone spoke: I have a story I can tell.
Simple, just like that.
And just like that, a treasure trove of Story is opened to us. Befitting the airport setting, the settings range wildly - Paris, Delhi, Frankfurt, Istanbul, New York, Lagos - but certain key themes and motifs are shared. One of these is the crossing of boundaries: between countries, between individuals, between inside and outside, between sleeping and waking, between the body and its surroundings.
In 'The Billionaire's Sleep', for example, we meet a captain of industry named Rajiv Malhotra, who is locked in a feverish need for constant activity. When he tries to sleep, "horizontality" proves to be "some kind of strange excitant that would send his exhausted mind scampering aimlessly around labyrinths of irrelevant problems to which he needed no solution". Searching for fresh stimulation - and for something on which to spend his money - he pays for an experimental treatment to create clones of himself and his wife, to give them the children they have never managed to have. Naturally, this being a sort of fairytale, they get twins; equally naturally, to Rajiv's horror, one twin is adorable perfection while the other is born "shrunken, misshapen". He orders what he calls the "creature" removed from his sight - a retainer ensures the boy is raised, in safety and love, far away - and takes his perfect daughter home, where she rejuvenates all who see her with how pretty and content she looks.
As Sapna grows up, however, it becomes apparent that her rejuvenating effects are not confined to people, or indeed to animate objects at all. In a lovely, surreal passage, we're shown how, all around her, things spontaneously grow:
[A] morning visit was met by a room full of white seeds that drifted lazily on the air currents from floor to ceiling, spores emitted by the geometric rows of spiralling grasses that had sprung overnight from the antique Persian rug on the floor of Sapna's room. [...] They moved her into another bedroom, where a wicker laundry basket burst overnight into a clump of bamboo-like spears that grew through the ceiling and erupted into the room above.
(The rest is going under a spoiler tag, just in case.)
There are 13 stories in all; some are less successful, but most are still hugely enjoyable. The whole thing is endlessly imaginative and marvellous fun, deftly negotiating an impressive variety of styles and tones - and drawing on a wide range of global storytelling traditions - in the creation of modern fables. Highly recommended.
July 12, 2019
Short stories disguised as a novel to sell better? Or Chaucer for stranded travellers? Reviews disagree, but for my money, if tales are headed 'The Sixth Story' rather than 'The Tale of the Traveller to Whom We Would've Ascribed Traits (If We Were Bothered)', the novel tag can't be justified.
Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport overnight before they can get a connection to Tokyo. We don't know anything about them, except that one, a Japanese businessman, suggests they tell stories to pass the time.
The stories themselves, though not personalised in any way to a teller, are pretty good. They're in the magical realism genre and share a theme of dislocation and metamorphosis. One might say even that they're fairytales. After all, when Oscar Wilde wrote The Nightingale and the Rose, did anybody say, "Ah, there's a man who wants to attract the attention of a woman and then a nightingale spoke to him - must be magical realism?" No, it's labelled a fairytale, and many of these stories might be fairytales also. Fairytales are unsubtle by nature. Consider, for example, that love at first sight is a key setup for many fairytales.
Other tropes recur. Abandoned children grow up to kill or fall in love with their unrecognised family members. A third son disappoints his father but has a strange destiny. A craftsman carries out a great work for a Prince who never pays him. A spell which can only be used safely nine times is used unsafely for a tenth, out of greed.
If you're interested in a collection of strange fairytales set in recognisable modern locations all over the world, I would recommend Tokyo Cancelled. But don't be fooled by the presentation. I kept comparing it unfavourably to World's End, part of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Here, too, an unlikely mix of travellers are stranded by a storm. Here, too, the travellers tell stories with a touch of magic from different realms. But the frame narrative is as real a story as the stories within it. The travellers, one of whom chooses to stay when the reality-storm passes, are gradually made known to us in the frame narrative and their stories, and styles, differ from one another.
There is no genuine frame narrative in Tokyo Cancelled, and that's why it loses a star from the four that its collection merits.
Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport overnight before they can get a connection to Tokyo. We don't know anything about them, except that one, a Japanese businessman, suggests they tell stories to pass the time.
Someone spoke; I have a story I can tell.
Simple, just like that.
The stories themselves, though not personalised in any way to a teller, are pretty good. They're in the magical realism genre and share a theme of dislocation and metamorphosis. One might say even that they're fairytales. After all, when Oscar Wilde wrote The Nightingale and the Rose, did anybody say, "Ah, there's a man who wants to attract the attention of a woman and then a nightingale spoke to him - must be magical realism?" No, it's labelled a fairytale, and many of these stories might be fairytales also. Fairytales are unsubtle by nature. Consider, for example, that love at first sight is a key setup for many fairytales.
"Before Natalia could see anything else [of a man raising a coffee cup] she had fallen suddenly, and breathlessly, in love." - The Ninth Story
"One day, as he travelled to work on the crowded Métro, he became fascinated by the female hand that was holding on to the bar in front of his nose, and whose owner he could not see. 'I will marry the person to whom that hand belongs', he thought to himself, and rushed after it when it left the train." - The Tenth Story
"One day a girl plucked up her courage and asked to have her ears cleaned... it was voluted like an exquisite shell, and from below you could see the light through it, like you can with the finest china." - The Twelfth Story
Other tropes recur. Abandoned children grow up to kill or fall in love with their unrecognised family members. A third son disappoints his father but has a strange destiny. A craftsman carries out a great work for a Prince who never pays him. A spell which can only be used safely nine times is used unsafely for a tenth, out of greed.
If you're interested in a collection of strange fairytales set in recognisable modern locations all over the world, I would recommend Tokyo Cancelled. But don't be fooled by the presentation. I kept comparing it unfavourably to World's End, part of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Here, too, an unlikely mix of travellers are stranded by a storm. Here, too, the travellers tell stories with a touch of magic from different realms. But the frame narrative is as real a story as the stories within it. The travellers, one of whom chooses to stay when the reality-storm passes, are gradually made known to us in the frame narrative and their stories, and styles, differ from one another.
There is no genuine frame narrative in Tokyo Cancelled, and that's why it loses a star from the four that its collection merits.
October 14, 2018
Много красив стил на разказване. Но сюрреализмът надделява като самоцел за сметка на смисъла и посланието в повечето истории, особено към края.
Явно е за по-големи ценители на магическия реализъм.
Явно е за по-големи ценители на магическия реализъм.
September 9, 2018
Video review to follow in October
February 10, 2023
Birbirine gevşek biçimde bağlanmış on üç öyküden oluşan bir roman ya da öyküler bütünü. Yazarın hayal gücü hayranlık verici ama bazı anlatım kusurları barındırıyor.
August 4, 2025
I really loved this one shoutout to the used book store in lewes Delaware for the rec! Essentially a bunch of short stories and I loved getting lost in all the little worlds
October 19, 2020
I read this in 2005, and wrote a note on it. Going through my old blogs, I found the note. And I thought: so this is who I was ~20 years ago.
And now you know too. Here you go, from August 2005.
......................................................
Strange surroundings. A flight gets cancelled, and the passengers are stranded at a rather nondescript and shabby airport in the middle of nowhere, a place described as "a back-corridor between two worlds". A few passengers are holed into nearby hotels and guest-houses.... and left behind to spend the night at the airport are 13 people. Huddled together, still in the mode for a crib or two, they decide on an innovative way to spend the night. They would tell stories, one story each, to the group. Everybody, true enough, must have a story to tell.
So there you are. An innovative concept, borrowing from the age-old method of story-telling to a crowd around a fire, and there you have 'Tokyo Cancelled', the book. Thirteen stories, from Lagos to Delhi, from Tokyo to New York, from Paris to unnamed, unknown lands, about a Japanese entrepreneur who has a crazy love (a fetish infact) for a life-size doll, about Robert de Niro's illegitimate son and Martin Scorsese and Isabella Rossellini's love-daughter, and about the exceptionally lucky Chinese ear-cleaner (which is one of my favourites), and an immortal in the middle of a smallpox outbreak (Ouch, that sounded like the back cover of the book itself ! ). Different, varied in texture and in size, tracking the most basic traits of man, the most basic virtues and the most basic flaws, some overtly fantastic to others which are much tacitly so, interesting reads they all are. One word of warning though. The stories being heavily philosophical ones in the garb of easy read, if one intends a quick scan, this is not the preferred choice. And easy read does not mean easy understanding (well, it often might not mean any understanding at all), so get yourself ready for the book before you pick it up.
Back to the book, a trend that one gets to notice in most of the stories is that of the protagonist being thrown in the midst of change that comes about in the surroundings. Some of these changes are pre-meditated, some sudden and astonishing, but all leave the protagonist grappling with the changed reality, and sometimes failing, but more often accepting the changed present as it is.
Among the stories, the one that touched me the most was the smallest one. About two-and-a-half pages, it tells the tale of this ageing couple and their two children. The anxieties and distaste for the father of their children's wanton, wild ways. And then a disaster. And then... life goes on. And one wouldn't complain and crib, but ensure that the same calamity does not befall the rest of the world.
Right after I had finished with Tokyo Cancelled, I had started off with the long delayed read of Haroun and the sea of stories. And reading Haroun, I would accept the reviews of Tokyo Cancelled's style. Dasgupta's style IS very similar to Rushdie's. Not quite the Rushdie of Midnight's Children (which I found confusing, meandering, a little self-obsessed yet creative and ... umm, intelligent. I have not been able to make up my mind as to whether intelligent is a good or a bad thing for a book), though. Tokyo Cancelled is possibly a little too intelligent for its own good.
For all Dasgupta's undoubted storytelling abilities, while reading the book, I did often have the feeling of walking into a glass wall. The stories are a little too intelligent, a little too fantastic to touch the common reader. At the risk of comparing, Midnight's Children did never give that feeling. Convoluted and weird, it yet did appeal to the heart. It did yet touch the heart. The philosophy in Tokyo Cancelled is distant, opaque and difficult... and indeed it is specifically that point which makes for a compelling second read. I know that Dasgupta would have wanted his reader to think, and thanks to him for that. But would he have really wanted his reader to think, and think some more, and not get it, and since she did not get it, proclaim the book as a masterpiece. C'mon now! That was the intention of the "Art" movement of the '80's in Hindi cinema. And that did not succeed, did it? And no movement, indeed no piece of art can really claim to have succeeded if it does not reach out to the people who are consumers of the art. And I could only wonder at what an amazing book this could have been had it been rid of the uber-fantasy lather. Especially because it is such a riveting read.
And now you know too. Here you go, from August 2005.
......................................................
Strange surroundings. A flight gets cancelled, and the passengers are stranded at a rather nondescript and shabby airport in the middle of nowhere, a place described as "a back-corridor between two worlds". A few passengers are holed into nearby hotels and guest-houses.... and left behind to spend the night at the airport are 13 people. Huddled together, still in the mode for a crib or two, they decide on an innovative way to spend the night. They would tell stories, one story each, to the group. Everybody, true enough, must have a story to tell.
So there you are. An innovative concept, borrowing from the age-old method of story-telling to a crowd around a fire, and there you have 'Tokyo Cancelled', the book. Thirteen stories, from Lagos to Delhi, from Tokyo to New York, from Paris to unnamed, unknown lands, about a Japanese entrepreneur who has a crazy love (a fetish infact) for a life-size doll, about Robert de Niro's illegitimate son and Martin Scorsese and Isabella Rossellini's love-daughter, and about the exceptionally lucky Chinese ear-cleaner (which is one of my favourites), and an immortal in the middle of a smallpox outbreak (Ouch, that sounded like the back cover of the book itself ! ). Different, varied in texture and in size, tracking the most basic traits of man, the most basic virtues and the most basic flaws, some overtly fantastic to others which are much tacitly so, interesting reads they all are. One word of warning though. The stories being heavily philosophical ones in the garb of easy read, if one intends a quick scan, this is not the preferred choice. And easy read does not mean easy understanding (well, it often might not mean any understanding at all), so get yourself ready for the book before you pick it up.
Back to the book, a trend that one gets to notice in most of the stories is that of the protagonist being thrown in the midst of change that comes about in the surroundings. Some of these changes are pre-meditated, some sudden and astonishing, but all leave the protagonist grappling with the changed reality, and sometimes failing, but more often accepting the changed present as it is.
Among the stories, the one that touched me the most was the smallest one. About two-and-a-half pages, it tells the tale of this ageing couple and their two children. The anxieties and distaste for the father of their children's wanton, wild ways. And then a disaster. And then... life goes on. And one wouldn't complain and crib, but ensure that the same calamity does not befall the rest of the world.
Right after I had finished with Tokyo Cancelled, I had started off with the long delayed read of Haroun and the sea of stories. And reading Haroun, I would accept the reviews of Tokyo Cancelled's style. Dasgupta's style IS very similar to Rushdie's. Not quite the Rushdie of Midnight's Children (which I found confusing, meandering, a little self-obsessed yet creative and ... umm, intelligent. I have not been able to make up my mind as to whether intelligent is a good or a bad thing for a book), though. Tokyo Cancelled is possibly a little too intelligent for its own good.
For all Dasgupta's undoubted storytelling abilities, while reading the book, I did often have the feeling of walking into a glass wall. The stories are a little too intelligent, a little too fantastic to touch the common reader. At the risk of comparing, Midnight's Children did never give that feeling. Convoluted and weird, it yet did appeal to the heart. It did yet touch the heart. The philosophy in Tokyo Cancelled is distant, opaque and difficult... and indeed it is specifically that point which makes for a compelling second read. I know that Dasgupta would have wanted his reader to think, and thanks to him for that. But would he have really wanted his reader to think, and think some more, and not get it, and since she did not get it, proclaim the book as a masterpiece. C'mon now! That was the intention of the "Art" movement of the '80's in Hindi cinema. And that did not succeed, did it? And no movement, indeed no piece of art can really claim to have succeeded if it does not reach out to the people who are consumers of the art. And I could only wonder at what an amazing book this could have been had it been rid of the uber-fantasy lather. Especially because it is such a riveting read.
February 14, 2024
По-скоро сборник с разкази, съвсем бегло обвързани в една история. Самите разкази са странни и чудати, прескачащи реалносто и магическото.
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