Cloud Atlas 20th Anniversary Edition..., David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas 20th Anniversary Edition..., David Mitchell
19 Rating(s)
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Cloud Atlas (20th Anniversary Edition)

Author: David Mitchell

Narrator: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, Kirby Heyborne, John Lee, Richard Matthews, David Mitchell, Gabrielle Zevin

Unabridged: 20 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/16/2004


Synopsis

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A timeless, structure-bending classic that explores how actions of individual lives impact the past, present and future—from a postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in fiction

Featuring a new afterword by David Mitchell and a new introduction by Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, to the West Coast in the 1970s, 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 novel boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, David 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 video game, 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.

List of Readers:
The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, read by Scott Brick
Letters From Zedelghem, read by Richard Matthews
Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, read by Cassandra Campbell
The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, read by John Lee
An Orison of Sonmi~451, read by Kim Mai Guest
Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Ev’rythin’ After, read by Kirby Heyborne

About David Mitchell

English born author, David Stephen Mitchell is a novelist and screenwriter. He was born in Southport and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended Hanley Castle High School. He also attended and graduated from the University of Kent, with a degree in English and American literature. He then completed his M.A. in Comparative Literature.

Mitchell has lived in different areas of the world. He lived for a year in Sicily, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan where he taught English for eight years. He then returned to England to focus his efforts on writing, and became financially capable of earning a living with his writing.

Mitchell has awards and best sellers from his body of work: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, Ghostwritter and The Bone Clocks. After the release of his novel adapted for screen, Cloud Atlas, Mitchell became a screenwriter. In collaboration with others, he wrote the series finale of the television series, Sense8, and for the film Matrix 4. He and his wife live in Ireland with their two children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on March 18, 2025

UPDATE: looking back, this was the first “big” review I ever wrote when I first joined goodreads, and from discussing this book I met a lot of my first gr-Friends that I would go on to read a lot of excellent books with. I’ve always had a soft spot for this book and am thankful of it for being what......more

Goodreads review by Vit on February 26, 2025

Tomorrow I will never see, though I have no wings I fly free. Of what I dream no one can know, I am but a container for a rainbow. Stories are clouds… The same story told by a different raconteur changes form and it may also change a meaning. I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o’ that kayak. Soul......more

Goodreads review by Ken-ichi on August 14, 2012

On re-reading in 2012... I admit, the surpringsingly-and-terrifyingly-not-awful trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of this book sent me plunging back into its hexapalindromic universe to re-solidify my own mental renditions of Frobisher's bicycle, Sonmi's soap packs, and Lousia's imaginary Cal......more

Goodreads review by karen on June 23, 2018

**okay - i have actually written a "review" for this book, all you early bird voters! feel free to take back your picture-votes if you hate my words (and by "feel free," i mean "don't you dare!!")** why have i never read this book before?? observe: do you see how it is wedged into a teetering, lode-bea......more


Quotes

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD
A Times (UK) Best Book of the Decade
A New York Times Notable Book
A Globe and Mail 100 Best Book
Longlisted for the IMPAC Award


“[David] Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novel’s every page.”The New York Times Book Review

“One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is—and should be—read by any student of contemporary literature.”—Dave Eggers

“Wildly entertaining . . . a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative.”People

“The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet—not just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I’m grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds.”—Michael Chabon

Cloud Atlas ought to make [Mitchell] famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer whose fearlessness is matched by his talent.”The Washington Post Book World

“Thrilling . . . One of the biggest joys in Cloud Atlas is watching Mitchell sashay from genre to genre without a hitch in his dance step.”Boston Sunday Globe

“Grand and elaborate . . . [Mitchell] creates a world and language at once foreign and strange, yet strikingly familiar and intimate.”Los Angeles Times