By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks Shortlisted for the Man Booker
Prize 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 Thrilling . . . One of the biggest joys in Cloud Atlas is watching Mitchell sashay from
genre to genre without a hitch in his dance step.-Boston Sunday Globe Grand and elaborate . . .
[Mitchell] creates a world and language at once foreign and strange yet strikingly familiar
and intimate.-Los Angeles Times
