David Mitchell is a modern classic of British literature, twice a finalist of the Booker Prize, the author of such intellectual bestsellers as “Bone Clock”, “Cloud Atlas” (recently filmed by Tom Tykver and the Wachowski brothers), “The Hungry House” and others. “Under the Sign of the Black Swan” is a novel of growing up, and Mitchell more than confidently performed in the territory traditionally associated with such names as Salinger, Bradbury and Harper Lee. So, welcome to the village of Black Swan Luzhok (where "there really are no swans ... This is, in general, such a joke"). Jason Taylor is thirteen years old, and we will see his life for thirteen months, from one January birthday to another. He struggles with stuttering, secretly writes poetry, makes do with his older sister, and hopes not to descend into the school hierarchy to the level of Dean Duran, nicknamed Fool. Meanwhile, in the Atlantic is the Falklands War, in the cinemas there are queues for “Cars of Fire”, and in his father’s office, where “the rotating chair is almost the same as in the gun towers of the Millennium Falcon with laser batteries”, then there are mysterious phone calls … “Under the sign of the black swan is a perfect cast of time and place, not a single false note” (Telegraph) The translation is published in a new edition.