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Awards
The Man Booker Prize (nominee)
James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction (nominee)
The Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year
Nebula (nominee)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (nominee)
Amazon.co.uk Review
It's hard not to become ensnared by words beginning with the letter B, when attempting to describe Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's third novel. It's a big book, for start, bold in scope and execution--a bravura literary performance, possibly. (Let's steer clear of breathtaking for now.) Then, of course, Mitchell was among Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and his second novel number9dreamwas shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Characters with birthmarks in the shape of comets are a motif; as are boats. Oh and one of the six narratives strands of the book--where coincidentally Robert Frobisher, a young composer, dreams up "a sextet for overlapping soloists" entitled Cloud Atlas--is set in Belgium, not far from Bruges. (See what I mean?)

Structured rather akin to a Chinese puzzle or a set of Matrioshka dolls, there are dazzling shifts in genre and voice and the stories leak into each other with incidents and people being passed on like batons in a relay race. The 19th-century journals of an American notary in the Pacific that open the novel are subsequently unearthed 80 years later on by Frobisher in the library of the ageing, syphilitic maestro he's trying to fleece. Frobisher's waspish letters to his old Cambridge crony, Rufus Sexsmith, in turn surface when Rufus, (by the 1970s a leading nuclear scientist) is murdered. A novelistic account of the journalist Luisa Rey's investigation into Rufus' death finds its way to Timothy Cavendish, a London vanity publisher with an author who has an ingenious method of silencing a snide reviewer. And in a near-dystopian Blade Runner-esque future, a genetically engineered fast food waitress sees a movie based on Cavendish's unfortunate internment in a Hull retirement home. (Cavendish himself wonders how a director called Lars might wish to tackle his plight). All this is less tricky than it sounds, only the lone "Zachary" chapter, told in Pacific Islander dialect (all "dingos'n'ravens", "brekker" and "f'llowin'"s) is an exercise in style too far. Not all the threads quite connect but nonetheless Mitchell binds them into a quite spellbinding rumination on human nature, power, oppression, race, colonialism and consumerism. --Travis Elborough

 
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Used availability for David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas


See all available used copies of this book at: Abebooks UK or Abebooks US
 

 

Hardback Editions

August 2004 : Library Binding
Cover of ISBN: 141766472XTitle: Cloud Atlas (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 1-4176-6472-X / 978-1-4176-6472-6 (USA edition)
Publisher: Turtleback
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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March 2004 : Hardback
Title: Cloud Atlas Signed
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-340-83632-6 / 978-0-340-83632-3 (UK edition)
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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March 2004 : Hardback
Cover of ISBN: 0340822775Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-340-82277-5 / 978-0-340-82277-7 (UK edition)
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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Paperback Editions

June 2011 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 1444730045Title: Cloud Atlas (Flipback Edition)
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 1-4447-3004-5 / 978-1-4447-3004-3
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   
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June 2005 : Paperback
Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 9999976352 / 9789999976350
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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February 2005 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 0340822783Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-340-82278-3 / 978-0-340-82278-4 (UK edition)
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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August 2004 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 0676974945Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-676-97494-5 / 978-0-676-97494-2 (USA edition)
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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August 2004 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 0375507256Title: Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-375-50725-6 / 978-0-375-50725-0 (USA edition)
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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August 2004 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 0340833203Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-340-83320-3 / 978-0-340-83320-9 (UK edition)
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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March 2004 : Paperback
Cover of ISBN: 0340832371Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-340-83237-1 / 978-0-340-83237-0 (UK edition)
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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2003 : Paperback
Title: Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Author(s): David Mitchell
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Availability: Amazon   
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Audio Editions

October 2005 : Audio Cassette
Cover of ISBN: 1844560708Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 1-84456-070-8 / 9781844560707 (UK edition)
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books
Availability: Amazon   Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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July 2005 : Audio Cassette
Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-7531-2195-6 / 978-0-7531-2195-5 (UK edition)
Publisher: ISIS Audio Books
Availability: Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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July 2005 : Audio CD
Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 0-7531-2441-6 / 978-0-7531-2441-3 (UK edition)
Publisher: ISIS Audio Books
Availability: Amazon UK   Amazon CA   
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June 2005 : Audio CD
Cover of ISBN: 1844560694Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 1-84456-069-4 / 9781844560691 (UK edition)
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Audio Books
Availability: Amazon UK   
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2005 : Audio Cassette
Cover of ISBN: 1415919704Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
ISBN: 1-4159-1970-4 / 978-1-4159-1970-5 (USA edition)
Publisher: Books on Tape, Inc.
Availability: Amazon   
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2004 : Audio CD
Cover of ISBN: B002HIATAYTitle: Cloud Atlas , Unabridged Library Edition
Author(s): David Mitchell
Publisher: Books on Tape
Availability: Amazon   
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Audio CD
Cover of ISBN: 141591978XTitle: Cloud Atlas
Author(s):
ISBN: 1-4159-1978-X / 978-1-4159-1978-1 (USA edition)
Publisher: Books on Tape
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Other Editions

November 2008 : Kindle edition
Cover of ISBN: B000SEGUDETitle: Cloud Atlas: A Novel
Author(s): David Mitchell
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Availability: Amazon   
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September 2008 : Kindle edition
Cover of ISBN: B002VHI8J0Title: Cloud Atlas
Author(s): David Mitchell
Publisher: Sceptre
Availability: Amazon UK   
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2004 : Unknown
Cover of ISBN: B003U4ER02Title: Cloud Atlas: A Novel [Paperback]
Author(s): David Mitchell (Author)
Availability: Amazon   
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