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. (Neel Mukherjee The Times)
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. (Lawrence Norfolk Independent)
Impeccably structured novel of ideas in many voices by a talent to watch. (Literary Editor's Best Books Observer)
About the Author
Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he taught English in Japan, where he wrote his first novel, Ghostwritten. Published in 1999, it was awarded the Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, number9dream, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. His third novel, Cloud Atlas, was shortlisted for six awards including the Man Booker Prize, and adapted for film in 2012. It was followed by Black Swan Green, shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller. Both were also longlisted for the Booker.
In 2013, The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice From the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida was published in a translation from the Japanese by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida. David Mitchell's sixth novel is The Bone Clocks (Sceptre, 2014).