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Solo by Rana Dasgupta
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Solo (original 2009; edition 2011)

by Rana Dasgupta

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3022986,282 (3.72)61
The highly anticipated second novel from the acclaimed author of 'Tokyo Cancelled'.
Member:lynnytisc
Title:Solo
Authors:Rana Dasgupta
Info:Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2011), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 352 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****1/2
Tags:Dr. Elaine Newton's 2011 summer reading list

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Solo by Rana Dasgupta (2009)

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» See also 61 mentions

English (29)  German (1)  All languages (30)
Showing 1-5 of 29 (next | show all)
I read this one a while ago, and don't recall any details. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 12, 2023 |
A genuinely original book of tremendous power and grace. The writing is gorgeous, the style entirely original, with a strange and haunting story that begins in straightforward fashion – the memories of a 100 year old man from Sophia looking back on his life.

His story stops and we’re suddenly introduced to a group of new characters living apparently unconnected lives in new locations. Slowly the story corkscrews back on itself and connections and shared histories begin to appear. My only disappointment was that the obscenely hideous Khatuna didn't get what was coming to her.

One of the most unusual books I’ve ever read, surprisingly easy to digest. Gripping, unique and highly recommended. ( )
1 vote MayaP | Jun 16, 2012 |
After reading 'Solo' and then taking a step back and reflecting on the book, I was able to appreciate Rana Dasgupta's writing. Dasgupta brings us a story about a man, Ulrich, his life, one of ordinary nature. There is no flash, no great success for Ulrich. He is a man who lived, who lost, who wanted to be someone, to be someone who did something great. But, as he reflects on his life we see that to him, his life fell short, there were points where a different choice could have pushed him to the life he wanted.

In the second half of the book, Ulrich conjures up daydreams. Daydreams in which his life winds and twists into a modern day story. Characters from his past take new shape and take on a new life. However, the pain, the sorrow, the triumphs, the hopes, the unfulfilled dreams, the friendships and love that took place in the first half resonate throughout.

Overall a great book, but one, that I had to reflect a bit once finished to see all that it was ( )
1 vote dianag27 | Mar 31, 2012 |
In a dilapidated building in Sofia, a blind old man is reflecting on his past life. This superbly narrated story of his dreams, loves, downfall and piecing together echoes the fate of his country through its struggle for independence, two world wars, communism and hangover capitalism. A string of satellite stories very cleverly completes the picture. This book is absolutely brillant and a delight to read. ( )
1 vote timtom | Dec 31, 2011 |
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
I had a lot of trouble getting into this book. The premise looked interesting to me but then the writing style was just too dense and I couldn't get invested in the story. I still love the idea of this book but I'm going to put it aside for now. ( )
  bostonbibliophile | Oct 5, 2011 |
Showing 1-5 of 29 (next | show all)
In Solo – which is ultimately a meditation on what it means to measure success, failure and time itself – Rana Dasgupta, ... , has created a work that is both literary and compelling, a prize-worthy feat indeed.
added by lkernagh | editThe Globe and Mail (Aug 6, 2010)
 
Solo is mannered in its strangeness, but utterly unforgettable in its humanity. It hums the inner and outer melodies of a life lived solo, until it becomes a discordant symphony of the human condition. This lifts it from a freak show to the kind of "philharmonic" novel that reminds us why we will always need to tell the extraordinary stories of people's ordinary lives. So that, like Ulrich, we can sift through those hundred years when "the world itself has become nonsense", and see more deeply into the "great black ocean of forgotten things".
added by kidzdoc | editThe Guardian, Kapka Kassabova (Mar 28, 2009)
 
WHAT a delight to find a novelist unfazed by the 21st century, confidently tracing the wrong turnings of the past 100 years, soaring insightfully over the mess of global developments that constitute the quagmire of today.

What a delight to read a fiction writer fully astute about life, love, culture and politics, catching in his cross-hairs ideologies, sciences, personal relationships, the terrors of ageing, the madness of music, organised crime, family tragedies -- even the novel genre itself -- examining them with dazzling clarity.
added by kidzdoc | editThe Australian, Nigel Krauth (Jan 28, 2009)
 
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Epigraph
Dedication
for my darling Monica
First words
The man has woken suddenly, in the dead zone of the night.
Quotations
But now he does not know what it means for a life to suceed or fail. How can a dog fail its life, or a tree? A life is just a quanitity; and he can no more see failure in it than he can see failure in a pile of earth, or a bucket of water. Failure and success are foreign terms to such blind matter.
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The highly anticipated second novel from the acclaimed author of 'Tokyo Cancelled'.

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Book description
With an imaginative audacity and lyrical brilliance that puts him in the company of David Mitchell andAleksandar Hemon, Rana Dasgupta paints a portrait of a century though the story of a hundred-year-old blind Bulgarian man in a first novel that announces the arrival of an exhilarating new voice in fiction.

In the first movement of Solo we meet Ulrich, the son of a railroad engineer, who has two great passions: the violin and chemistry. Denied the first by his father, he leaves for the Berlin of Einstein and Fritz Haber to study the latter. His studies are cut short when his father’s fortune evaporates, and he must return to Sofia to look after his parents. He never leaves Bulgaria again. Except in his daydreams—and it is those dreams we enter in the volatile second half of the book. In a radical leap from past to present, from life lived to life imagined, Dasgupta follows Ulrich’s fantasy children, born of communism but making their way into a post-communist world of celebrity and violence.

Intertwining science and heartbreak, the old world and the new, the real and imagined, Solo is a virtuoso work.
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Rana Dasgupta's book SOLO was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

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