Cloud Atlas

About the Book

From David Mitchell, the Booker Prize nominee, award-winning writer and one of the featured authors in Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists 2003" issue, comes his highly anticipated third novel, a work of mind-bending imagination and scope.

"Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies..."

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; 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 down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

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Elke9 / 10

“This is a most unusual book. It's divided into (or united by?) 6 different stories which are told in part poetic, part rough language. Each time the reader has finished one of the stories and moves to the next, it's with deepest regret to leave the characters. After a few pages into the new story, you can hardly wait to get on with this one. Most amazing!”

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Risingshadow

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Meet the author

David Mitchell

David Stephen Mitchell (born 1969) is an English novelist. He has written six novels, two of which, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has lived in Italy, Japan and Ireland.

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