Do you want to know what really happened in the tech bubble? How the real-estate boom started? How the world really operates? Can you handle the unvarnished, completely politically-incorrect truth? Don’t assume anything: come out on a TERRACE for a view you never imagined...

It’s the end of one century and the beginning of a new. Technological development has become a firestorm, both driving and driven by an economic boom such as the world has never seen. At the core of the inferno are the people whose lives are inextricably linked to the Silicon Valley and the city of San Francisco.

From the angry Asian-Hispanic beauty Angelina Sumana Ruiz, to the proud, WASP, mega-lawyer Preston Elliott Hughes, Jr.; from the struggling single mother SandyMae Miller, to the egotistical New Economy CEO John Dorman; from Rasheyd, the Saudi Arabian businessman, to the generation Y, internet porn king Marcus Caughman; from the lowly Mexican cleaning woman, Maria, to the giant of the global construction industry and last leader of a powerful family dynasty, Samuel McAndrews; and more... they frantically fan the flames and attempt to extract what they can from the ensuing whirlwind.

Gangbangers, environmentalists, clerics, accountants, activists, bureaucrats, socialites, lobbyists, and others join them all in a swirling, chaotic, fin de siècle, ka boom! When the dust settles, the result is there for any eye who wishes to behold. Together they have built the next layer of mankind’s progress: A TERRACE ON THE TOWER OF BABEL.

Set in the San Francisco Bay Area, with related scenes in New York, London, Washington D.C., Riyadh, and Ibiza, A TERRACE ON THE TOWER OF BABEL is a fast-moving, fascinating and boldly rollicking tale of epic proportions full of romance, intrigue, philosophy, history, science, humor, thrills, triumph, and defeat. It is stark in its reality – frightening at times, comforting at others, rife with controversy yet mortared with sympathetic accord. Delve deep into its provocative and compelling depths or float along at the surface and enjoy it in either case – this is a story you’ll never forget!

A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?

A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut novel of a writer with astonishing gifts.