Cloud Atlas, published in 2004, is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction award, and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and was short-listed for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and Arthur C. Clarke Award. Unusually, it received awards from both the general literary community and the speculative fiction community. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and featuring an ensemble cast, was released in 2012.
The book combines metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction, with interconnected nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawai'i in a distant post-apocalyptic future. Its title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Rather than being a reference to the cloud atlases used …
Cloud Atlas, published in 2004, is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction award, and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and was short-listed for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and Arthur C. Clarke Award. Unusually, it received awards from both the general literary community and the speculative fiction community. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and featuring an ensemble cast, was released in 2012.
The book combines metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction, with interconnected nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawai'i in a distant post-apocalyptic future. Its title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Rather than being a reference to the cloud atlases used in meteorology, Mitchell has stated that the title and the book address reincarnation and the universality of human nature, with the title referring to a changing landscape (a "cloud") over manifestations of fixed human nature (the "atlas").
I liked following the different stories and bouncing back and forth between them. I'm not totally sure what the thread that wove them all together was, but the individual stories kept me reading and the book as a whole was fun to read. Having seen the movie before reading the books, I had already formulated pictures of what all the characters looked like, which was probably helpful since there were many to keep track of.
