Clearly, the publishers of David Mitchell's novel are already all too well aware of what the reader is about to pay dearly for. The net they throw around it is a wide one. According to them, it is a

Far Eastern, multi-textual, urban-pastoral, road-movie-of-the-mind, cyber-metaphysical, detective/family chronicle, coming-of-age-love-story genre of one.

All of which suggests that they are as confused and as uncertain - and perhaps as relieved - as the reader will be upon turning to the final chapter and finding only a single empty page.

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