David Mitchell is a modern classic of British literature, a two-time Man Booker Prize finalist, and the author of such intellectual bestsellers as The Bone Clocks, Cloud Atlas (recently filmed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski brothers), The Hungry House and others. Under the Sign of the Black Swan is a coming-of-age novel, and Mitchell is more than confident in treading territory traditionally associated with names like Salinger, Bradbury and Harper Lee. So, welcome to the village of Black Swan Meadow (where “there aren’t really any swans... It’s kind of a joke”). Jason Taylor is thirteen years old, and we see his life over the course of thirteen months, from one January birthday to the next. He struggles with a stutter, secretly writes poetry, hangs out with his older sister and hopes not to fall in the school hierarchy to the level of Dean Duran, nicknamed the Fool. Meanwhile, the Falklands War is going on in the Atlantic, there are queues at the cinemas for “Chariots of Fire”, and in my father’s office, where “the swivel chair is almost the same as in the gun turrets of the Millennium Falcon near the laser batteries,” mysterious sounds are heard every now and then phone calls... “Under the Sign of the Black Swan is a perfect snapshot of time and place, not a single false note” (Telegraph). The translation is published in a new edition.