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Cloud Atlas: A Novel
by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas: A Novel Cover

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Awards

Winner of The Morning News 2005 Tournament of Books
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Powells.com Staff Pick

If you haven't read David Mitchell's previous novels, let Cloud Atlas be your introduction to his incredible imagination. Here six convincing and wonderfully realized worlds, filled with surprise and originality, loosely intermingle. Each story, inhabited with equally compelling characters, proves the genius of this amazingly gifted writer. Michal, Powells.com

While it was hard to narrow down my list to just five "best of" picks, I didn't have to think twice about what would be my favorite book of the year. In Cloud Atlas Mitchell again uses the format of connecting short stories with recurring motifs into a larger, almost epic narrative that spans the globe and centuries of human history. Filled with wonderful characters, effortless shifts in style, and more imagination than you can shake a stick at, Cloud Atlas will be a tough book for its author to top. Personally, I cannot wait to see him try. Gerry, Powells.com

"For readers who enjoy good stories wrapped around an inventive structure. Each tale is obliquely connected to another moving forward through time. And each has a totally different voice and style." Salli, Powells.com

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"David Mitchell is a spookily protean writer. His favored technique — he used it in his first novel, Ghostwritten — is to build a long narrative out of shorter ones, stories told in vastly different voices and styles, then cinch the whole patchwork together with some supernal device that reveals their underlying connections. In Ghostwritten, he couldn't manage to pull off that final, unifying gesture, but his third novel, Cloud Atlas, is far more convincing, a genuine and thoroughly entertaining literary puzzle." Laura Miller, Salon.com (read the entire Salon.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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.

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 civilization — 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.

Review:

"At once audacious, dazzling, pretentious and infuriating, Mitchell's third novel weaves history, science, suspense, humor and pathos through six separate but loosely related narratives. Like Mitchell's previous works, Ghostwritten and number9dream (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize), this latest foray relies on a kaleidoscopic plot structure that showcases the author's stylistic virtuosity. Each of the narratives is set in a different time and place, each is written in a different prose style, each is broken off mid-action and brought to conclusion in the second half of the book. Among the volume's most engaging story lines is a witty 1930s-era chronicle, via letters, of a young musician's effort to become an amanuensis for a renowned, blind composer and a hilarious account of a modern-day vanity publisher who is institutionalized by a stroke and plans a madcap escape in order to return to his literary empire (such as it is). Mitchell's ability to throw his voice may remind some readers of David Foster Wallace, though the intermittent hollowness of his ventriloquism frustrates. Still, readers who enjoy the 'novel as puzzle' will find much to savor in this original and occasionally very entertaining work. Agent, Douglas Stewart. (Aug. 24) Forecast: Lots of buzz and a friendly paperback price will ensure strong sales, but like other fashionable tomes (think Pynchon's Mason & Dixon) Mitchell's novel may be more admired than read." Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Review:

"[A] remarkable achievement, a frightening, beautiful, funny, wildly inventive, elaborately conceived tour de force....Each of these tales more than earns its keep. Collectively, they constitute a work of art." San Francisco Chronicle

Review:

"Great Britain's answer to Thomas Pynchon outdoes himself...maddeningly intricate, improbably entertaining....[O]ne of the most imaginative and rewarding novels in recent memory....Sheer storytelling brilliance." Kirkus Reviews

Review:

"Mitchell has a gift for creating fully realized worlds with a varied cast of characters. However...while the clever construction serves to highlight the novel's big ideas, the continual interruptions may distance the average reader." Library Journal

Review:

"The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet — not just dazzling, amusing or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I've never read anything quite like it, and I'm grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds, which are all one world, which is, in turn, enchanted by Mitchell's spell-caster prose, our own." Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Review:

"This rich, imaginative novel parcels out its surprises with impeccable timing, and the less you know in advance, the more pleasure it gives....Exhilarating, challenging, full of invention, this book may show where the future of the novel — and of humanity — is headed." Orlando Sentinel

Review:

"Cloud Atlas is no novel for the casual reader in search of easy entertainment, though much of it reads with the ease of a commercial page-turner. It is a finely wrought text, examining both past and future, for our time." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Review:

"Mitchell's talents for riotous incident and energetic prose keep the pages turning, but Atlas' disparate strands are linked only by the flimsiest of pretenses....The six cylinders never function as one engine. (Grade: B)" Entertainment Weekly

Review:

"Mitchell's exploration of power and greed is riveting, and the way the stories come together, through time and cultures, is astonishing. Cloud Atlas is a novel not to be missed." Rocky Mountain News

Review:

"Mitchell possesses an amazingly copious and eclectic imagination." William Boyd

Review:

"Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He...can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novel's every page. But Cloud Atlas is the sort of book that makes ambition seem slightly suspect..." Tom Bissell, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"A boomeranging historical novel moving from the Age of Discover to post-apocalyptic Hawaii with stops on the way in China Syndrome-era California and dystopian capitalist Korea. An amazing performance of ventriloquism and brains." Tin House magazine

Review:

"Watch out for Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, a work of free-wheeling fantasy by a cutting-edge writer." David Robson, Sunday Telegraph (U.K.)

Review:

"Mr. Mitchell is on record that his goal was a reading experience akin to taking apart a Russian doll, then putting it back together. To this extent, he has certainly succeeded....For all its dazzle, though, Cloud Atlas is substance still searching for style." Dallas Morning News

Review:

"[Mitchell's] previous novels, Ghostwritten and Number9Dream, also feature stories that are interconnected, but tenuously. His handling of the technique in Cloud Atlas is more dexterous." The Oregonian (Portland, OR)

Review:

"Some of Mitchell's sections are quite brilliant and moving, while a couple devolve to the pedestrian, marring the overall effect of the novel." Chicago Tribune

Review:

"[A] remarkable book....It knits together science fiction, political thriller and historical pastiche with musical virtuosity and linguistic exuberance: there won't be a bigger, bolder novel next year." Justine Jordan, The Guardian (U.K.)

Review:

"David Mitchell is by no means a complete unknown, but I shall be very surprised if...Cloud Atlas doesn't propel him into the front rank of novelists." D J Taylor, The Independent (U.K.)

Review:

"One of the biggest joys of Cloud Atlas is to watch Mitchell sashay from genre to genre without a hitch in his dance step. Whether you are a fantasy-book reader or a thriller reader...you will find Cloud Atlas maintains a startling level of authenticity throughout." Hartford Courant

Review:

"A daunting talent, adept with the global canvas, and able to move from the technological to the spiritual with supernatural ease." Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday (U.K.)

Synopsis:

In his captivating third novel, 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.
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About the Author

David Mitchell is one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2003. His first novel, Ghostwritten, won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and his second, number9dream, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lives in Herefordshire, England.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 4 comments:
Kirstin, March 4, 2008 (view all comments by Kirstin)
A jaw-droppingly brilliant novel that offers both virtuosic literary prowess and real soul. The structure is fascinating, the several genre styles pitch-perfect, and the plot fascinating and affecting. I won't spoil this book's many delights by revealing specifics. Mitchell is one of our most talented living writers, and Cloud Atlas is a book well worth reading.
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Samsara, December 30, 2006 (view all comments by Samsara)
It's impossible to give a coherent summary of this book since in actuality there are 6 plots, with 6 entirely different narrative styles. And each of them will have you divided: on the one hand, you want to turn the page and discover what happens next. On the other hand, you want to reread each line, keeping the taste of his words on your tongue as long as possible. I think my vocabulary tripled from reading this book. So did my capacity for hope. Read it. Now.
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cjmalcolm, October 13, 2006 (view all comments by cjmalcolm)
I read Cloud Atlas during the summer of 2005 and found it remarkable in terms of structure, imagination, detail, character and plot development. The author switches perspectives with ease which makes me scratch my head in wonder compared to your standard 'parallel plot-line fiction which ties it all together by the final page' book discussion club pick.
Am uncertain that my group will be able to cut a wide swath through the plot-lines in the limited time which they have(a month, and a busy one) but will be proud to present such a unique book to my unsuspecting friends!Memorable read. Oct.13,2006
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375507250
Author:
Mitchell, David
Publisher:
Random House Trade
Location:
New York
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Reincarnation
Subject:
Fantasy fiction
Subject:
Fate and fatalism
Copyright:
2004
Edition Number:
1st U.S. ed.
Publication Date:
August 2004
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
528
Dimensions:
8.46x5.74x1.25 in. 1.40 lbs.
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