David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas, 20 Years On
Wednesday 15th May
Greenside Church, 1b Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, EH7 5AB
7pm
7.30pm
When it was first published in 2004, The Guardian called Cloud Atlas ‘a remarkable book’, adding ‘there won't be a bigger, bolder novel this year. With over half a million copies sold, a roster of awards and nominations and blockbuster adaptation to boot, Cloud Atlas has cemented itself as one the defining texts of the 21st Century.
20 years on, we couldn't be happier to welcome David Mitchell to chat about this remarkable book and his career as one of our most preeminent literary novelists.
Cloud Atlas
Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies . . .
A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1850.
A disinherited composer conning his way into the home of a dying genius in interwar Belgium.
A high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California.
A vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors.
The testament of a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row.
And Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation.
The narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's echoes along the corridor of history - echoes that change destinies in ways great and small.
In a globe-encircling narrative reaching from the nineteenth century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us.
About David Mitchell
David Mitchell is the author of the novels Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Bone Clocks, Slade House and Utopia Avenue. He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, won the World Fantasy Award, and the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes, among others. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work. His screenwriting credits include the TV shows Pachinko and Sense8, and the movie Matrix: Resurrections.