About the Book
A SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY EDITION CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF CLOUD ATLAS
With an introduction by Gabrielle Zevin (author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow) and a new afterword by David Mitchell
'Nothing short of a miracle'
THE TIMES
'A novel of breathtaking ambition and scale, spanning continents, oceans and centuries'
INDEPENDENT
'A novel in the biggest, most exhilarating sense'
OBSERVER
Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies . . .
A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1850.
A disinherited composer conning his way into the home of a dying genius in interwar Belgium.
A high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California.
A vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors.
The testament of a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row.
And Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.
The narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's echoes along the corridor of history - echoes that change destinies in ways great and small.
In a globe-encircling narrative reaching from the nineteenth century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, winner of Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year and a BBC Two Between the Covers Book Club pick
About the Author :
David Mitchell is the author of the novels Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Bone Clocks, Slade House and Utopia Avenue. He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, won the World Fantasy Award, and the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes, among others. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work. His screenwriting credits include the TV shows Pachinko and Sense8, and the movie Matrix: Resurrections.
In addition, David Mitchell together with KA Yoshida has translated from Japanese two autism memoirs by Naoki Higashida: The Reason I Jump and Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight.
He lives in Ireland.
Review :
Mitchell's almost comically ambitious novel is indeed a kind of cumulus: a wild and woolly condensation of ideas, styles and far-flung milieus whose only true commonality is the reincarnated soul at its center. The book's six nesting narratives - from 1850s New Zealand through 1930s Belgium, groovy California, recent-ish England, dystopian Korea and Hawaii - also often feel like a postmodern puzzle-box that whirls and clicks as its great world(s) spin, throwing off sparks of pulp, philosophy and fervid humanism
Remarkable . . . it knits together science fiction, political thriller and historical pastiche with musical virtuosity and linguistic exuberance
An impeccable dance of genres . . . an elegiac, radiant festival of prescience, meditation and entertainment
His wildest ride yet . . . a singular achievement, from an author of extraordinary ambition and skill
David Mitchell entices his readers onto a rollercoaster, and at first they wonder if they want to get off. Then - at least in my case - they can't bear the journey to end
A magnificent tour de force
A glorious puzzle for the reader . . . Mitchell's storytelling in Cloud Atlas is of the best
An impeccably structured novel of ideas in many voices
A novel of breathtaking ambition and scale, spanning continents, oceans and centuries
Funny, exciting, imaginative and energetic
A virtuoso performance . . . deeply impressive
The way Mitchell inhabits the different voices of the novel is close to miraculous . . . No other British novelist, to my mind, combines such a darkly futuristic intelligence with such polyphonic ease
His most accomplished achievement to date . . . a novel in the biggest, most exhilarating sense
Gloriously inventive and dazzlingly virtuosic
A thrilling ride of a story
Tremendous . . . one of the most shamelessly exciting books imaginable
Stunning . . . One of those rare books that manages to be enormously clever while resisting the temptation to show off
Reassuringly excellent
Engrossing
Mitchell writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novel's every page
This isn't just one brilliant book, it's a collection of six completely different brilliant books
Mind-bogglingly good
One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is - and should be - read by any student of contemporary literature
Astonishing . . . essential fiction for the 21st century
Not just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I've never read anything quite like it
An intense, arcing colossus of a book whose narrative links, supplied by the voices of six main characters, are spun out into a unified theory of everything: history, human evolution, science, the will to power. The voices span epochs, continents, and genres . . . Mitchell has rightly commanded attention for the sheer breadth and energy of his composition . . . I am moved by (his) talent
It takes only a few pages of any part of this masterful feast of a novel to make you want to read the rest
David Mitchell may well be possessed of genius . . . As well-plotted, entertaining narrative, Cloud Atlas succeeds on many levels. As political and cultural fable, with an unerring humanist sense of the dangerous will to power that lies at the dark heart of man, it's visionary
As mind-bending in its ideas as it is accessible on the page . . . It pretty much resists hyperbole simply by being better than you'd ever dare hope
