
Everything you need to know about Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004, David Mitchell’s genre-defying epic is one of the most original works in the archives. Here’s our beginner’s guide
Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004. 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.
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. Six stories that echo and impact on each other, and that together point to a terrifying vision of the future.
About the Author
David Mitchell has written nine novels and adapted his work for screen and stage. He was born in 1969 on the Lancashire coast, but was raised in Malvern, Worcestershire