Cloud Atlas (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780375507250)

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.

Author: David Mitchell
ISBN-10: 0375507256
ISBN-13: 9780375507250
Publisher: Random House Trade
Language: English
Published: 08/17/2004
Pages: 528
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.96lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 1.20d

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.5
Point Value: 27
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 100010 / Cloud Atlas

Award: Man Booker Prize - Nominee
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Nominee
Award: Nebula Awards - Nominee
Award: ALA Notable Books - Winner

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2004 pg. 464
Library Journal 06/15/2004 pg. 60
Publishers Weekly 06/28/2004 pg. 30
Entertainment Weekly 08/20/2004 pg. 133
Time 08/23/2004 pg. 67
New Yorker (The) 08/23/2004 pg. 85
New York Times 08/29/2004 pg. 7
People Weekly 09/13/2004 pg. 58
New York Times 12/05/2004 pg. 39
LJ Best Books of Year 01/01/2005 pg. 57
New Yorker (The) 07/05/2010 pg. 69
New Yorker (The) 09/08/2014 pg. 78