Book of Clouds

Named one of the 10 Best Books Set in Berlin by The Guardian (UK) "Beautifully evocative." --Malcolm Burgess, The Guardian "A hypnotic first novel . . . [Book of Clouds] has the power of dreams and still hasn't left me."--Junot Diaz, Salon.com (Best Books of 2009, Authors' Picks) "First novels by young writers who see the world with a fresh, original vision and write about it with clarity and restraint are rare enough to begin with. When you add in the fact that Chloe Aridjis's Book of Clouds is also a stunningly accurate portrait of Berlin, as well as a thoughtful portrayal of a young Mexican Jew drifting through her life abroad, this novel becomes required reading of the most pleasurable sort. . . . A book that has so much to recommend it, not least its ability to convey both actual and distorted realities at once."--Wendy Lesser, The New York Times Book Review "Spiked with a dreamlike urban surrealism. . . . Tatiana is deeply inhabited by her author, who moves calmly from one precinct to another in Tatiana's unusual mind. . . . Magic and poetry are everywhere in Book of Clouds . . . An unsettling atmosphere unlike anything in recent fiction."--Regina Marler, Los Angeles Times "Once in a while a book comes along and does what it's meant to do. It carves out a space for itself in the memory and it settles there, changing the way we see the world. . . . Like Gogol, Chloe Aridjis is interested in caricatures of urbanity, the space between comedy and metaphysical horror, and the confrontation between character and our own atavistic fears. Quiet, brave, and utterly unique, [Book of Clouds] will disturb, satiate, and change the way you think."--The Times (UK) "A stirring and lyrical first novel by a young writer of immense talent."--Paul Auster "Exquisitely written, Book of Clouds is a perfect Berlin story for our unsettled times, and a remarkable debut."--Francisco Goldman "[An] exceptional debut novel . . . Readers who know Berlin will find Aridjis's re-creation of it almost uncanny, achieved with great clarity of vision--you're right there, every moment--but also with such economy, using just a few carefully observed details. Those who do not know the city will feel somehow sure they do by the end of the book. . . . Book of Clouds is a beautifully turned piece of writing of extraordinary assurance . . . and as natural as breathing. Both vivid and dreamlike, at once very precise in its images and also enchantingly broad-brush atmospheric, this is a debut more captivating than any I've read in some time."--Daniel Hahn, The Independent "Chloe Aridjis has achieved something quite astonishing in a first book by a young writer: a rethinking of one of our most complacent forms, the historical novel. . . . The writer [Aridjis] calls to mind is the Modernist Haruki Murakami, with his unsolved riddles and ultra-cool characters."--Helen Rumbelow, The Times (UK) "Aridjis is an insightful observer of post-reunification Berlin, its restless nightlife, its transient flea-markets, its shifting landscape of neglect and gentrification, the ghosts of its past - and the chilling rise of the far right. Her lyrical, restrained prose conjures a dream-like atmosphere that borders on magical realism. This haunting debut is a significant and memorable addition to the literature of a troubling city."--CJ Schuler, The Independent "Original and nuanced . . . Provocative . . . Like WG Sebald reborn as a young woman, [Tatiana] walks the [Berlin] streets . . . [as] the weight of history presses in. . . . [Book of Clouds is] an entirely refreshing portrait of young womanhood, it is unselfconscious, uncompromising, wholly authentic: a fraying mass of narrative loose ends, it is also somehow satisfying in its open-endedness. . . . A most unusual debut."--Justine Jordan, The Guardian "Fresh and original . . . A portrait of Berl