In a nutshell, think of it as six separate novellas with a small easter egg, nodding to the previous story, within each.ĭavid Mitchell has written nine novels as well as essays and adapted his work for screen and stage. It’s complicated, but that’s really where the genius of the book lies. Each story is connected to the next by something placed within the text, such as mention of a document, a series of letters, or even a novel - containing a wry nod to the events of a previous chapter.Ĭloud Atlas is then brought to its conclusion in reverse chronological order in the second half of the book and things come full circle when Mitchell wraps up the opening narrative, as the novel’s finale. Still with us? The book has been written in what’s called a ‘Russian-doll’ style structure, meaning each narrative sits within the following story. After the sixth story ends, Mitchell then resumes the previous five stories at points further into the novel. The following tale takes the reader to a new time and location, essentially to begin all over again, without acknowledgement of the previous narrative. But while most novels conventionally use chapters to delineate sections of their plot, Cloud Atlas dovetails its own stories together, meaning one may simply end, abruptly and without conclusion, for another to begin. His novel defies literary conventions and 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.Ĭloud Atlas is comprised of six distinct stories, told in eleven parts. Mitchell purposefully interrupts each of the stories to begin the next, and civilisation - as we know it - ends in the middle of the novel, only for the author to pick up with a post-apocalyptic vision of the future, allowing him to conclude each tale. But the heart of Cloud Atlas is a labyrinth of tales that delve into the human experience, which Mitchell tells through multiple voices. Throughout his novel, Mitchell weaves a deep critique of the post-industrial age. Together, they point to a terrifying vision of what is to come.
Each of David Mitchell’s characters has a comet-shaped birthmark and names, dates and references reoccur, hinting at a greater connection between the six protagonists.īeginning in 1850 and ending in a dystopian future, Cloud Atlas’s stories all echo and impact on each other, showing how fates can intertwine. Cloud Atlas, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004, is a novel comprised of six interconnected tales, each written in a unique style and told from a differing perspective: 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 a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.
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