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David Mitchell, author of the Man Booker-shortlisted Cloud Atlas, returns with a vintage novel destined to be his most captivating achievement to date. David Mitchell comes home - to England, 1982, and the cusp of adolescence. Jason Taylor is 13, doomed to be growing up in the most boring family in the deadest village (Black Swan Green) in the dullest county (Worcestershire) in the most tedious nation (England) on earth. And he stammers. 13 chapters, each as self-contained as a short story, follow 13 months in his life as he negotiates the pitfalls of school and home and contends with bullies, girls and family politics. In the distance, the Falklands conflict breaks out; close at hand, the village mobilises against a gypsy camp. And through Jason's eyes, we see what he doesn't know he knows - and watch unfold what will make him wish his life had been as uneventful as he had believed. Vividly capturing the mood of the times - high unemployment, Cold War politics and the sunset of agrarian England - this is at once a portrait of an era and of an age: the black hole between childhood and teenagerdom.

Moving between exotica and cyber-unreality, David Mitchell's Booker-shortlisted novel is concerned with a boy's coming of age, ethical responsibilities and the great questions of love and duty. Written in an episodic format, the novel's style is adventurous and dreamlike, as it weaves its way through an unnavigable Japanese city.