Cloud Atlas (Film Tie-in)

Author(s): David Mitchell

General

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks - Now a major motion picture- Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize


 


Includes a new Afterword by David Mitchell


 


A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in twenty-first-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.


 


Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.


 


But the story doesn't end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.


 


As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.


 


Praise for Cloud Atlas


 


" David] Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He 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."--The New York Times Book Review


 


"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."--Dave Eggers


 


"Wildly entertaining . . . a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative."--People


 


"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."--Michael Chabon


 


"Cloud Atlas ought to make Mitchell] famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer whose fearlessness is matched by his talent."--The Washington Post Book World

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Product Information

The film tie-in edition of David Mitchell's prize-winning novel. The film, released internationally in 2012, stars Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Halle Berry, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant and Jim Broadbent.

'A remarkable book ... there won't be a bigger, bolder novel this year.' - Guardian

'An impeccable dance of genres ... an elegiac, radiant festival of prescience, meditation and entertainment.' - The Times

'His wildest ride yet ... a singular achievement, from an author of extraordinary ambition and skill'- Matt Thorne, Independent on Sunday

'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.' - AS Byatt, Guardian

'Mitchell's storytelling in Cloud Atlas is of the best. I was, appropriately, captivated.' - Lawrence Norfolk, Independent

'The best novel of the year so far ... a thrilling ride of a story' - Philip Hensher, Summer Reading, Observer

'Impeccably structured novel of ideas in many voices by a talent to watch.' - Literary Editor's Best Books, Observer

David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten, was published in 1999, when it won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second, Number9Dream, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2003 he was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Cloud Atlas, his third novel, won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the South Bank Show Literature Prize, and the Best Literary Fiction and Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year categories in the British Book Awards, as well as being shortlisted for a further six awards including the Man Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. It was followed by Black Swan Green, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the Man Booker. His latest novel, The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet, was published in 2010. Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he spent several years teaching in Japan, and now lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.

General Fields

  • : 9781444730876
  • : Hodder & Stoughton
  • : Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
  • : 0.373
  • : September 2012
  • : 197mm X 130mm X 36mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : September 2012
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : David Mitchell
  • : Paperback
  • : Unabridged
  • : 823/.914
  • : 560