Her entry begins:
There are few authors whose work makes me look at my diary and pencil in a two-day slot for reading when they have a new book coming out. David Mitchell is one of them. While waiting for Mitchell's new novel The Bone Clocks, due out in September, I picked up his debut Ghostwritten.About Memory of Water, from the publisher:
Ghostwritten is a novel with a multitude of voices and characters, each equally compelling. Their interwoven lives and the way the book spans geography and time feel at times like blueprints for Mitchell's later grand opus, Cloud Atlas. But this familiarity works for rather than against the book. One of the reasons why I enjoy Mitchell's work so much is that all of his novels seem to take place in the same fictional universe (or possibly multiple, overlapping fictional universes). Characters...[read on]
An amazing, award-winning speculative fiction debut novel by a major new talent, in the vein of Ursula K. Le Guin.Visit Emmi Itäranta's website.
Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learningto become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.
But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father’s death the army starts watching their town—and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.
Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.
Writers Read: Emmi Itäranta.
--Marshal Zeringue
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