About this Book
By the author of THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, David Mitchell's bestselling and Booker Prize-shortlisted novel was one of Richard & Judy's 100 Books of the Decade and has now been made into a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Grant 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 Reagans 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 others echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small. In his extraordinary 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.
About the Author
David Mitchells first novel, GHOSTWRITTEN, was published in 1999. It was awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best book by a writer under thirty-five, and was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, NUMBER9DREAM, followed in 2001 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Grantas Best of Young British Novelists. He also returned to Britain from Japan, where he spent several years, and now lives in Ireland.