Cloud Atlas

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David Mitchell

Random House, New York, 2011, 2004, English

Fiction

ISBN: 9780375507250

From the Publisher. 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 Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilization—the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, the British writer David Mitchell 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.

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Lisa Jenks

On Lisa Jenks’s Book List

A fascinating novel with an interesting structure—moving forward in time, then reversing itself. It’s a story that unwinds and winds gracefully yet mysteriously.

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