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Sample
Cloud Atlas
Unabridged
By
David Mitchell
Narrated by
Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, Kirby Heyborne, John Lee and Richard Matthews
Regular Price:
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Program Type
Audiobook (Fiction)
Publisher
Length
19 hrs and 33 mins
Audible Release Date
11-23-04
Audio Formats About Formats
2 3 4 Audible Enhanced Audio
Customer Rating

3.9 based on 265 ratings
 

Audible Editor Reviews

Why we think it's Essential: This is an ingenious novel composed of six embedded stories interconnected with subtle nuance and utter finesse. Brilliant prose, sharp social criticism, and six distinct narratives combine to make this a superb listen. The varying narrations provide unique tones and voices for each story, perfectly mimicking Mitchell's writing. I'd have given Mitchell the Booker Prize for this. —Chris Doheny

Publisher's Summary

From David Mitchell, the Booker Prize nominee, award-winning writer, and one of the featured authors in Granta's Best of Young British Novelists 2003 issue, comes his highly anticipated third novel, a work of mind-bending imagination and scope.

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, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 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.

This audiobook is available exclusively as an audio download!

Note to customers: The complicated format of this novel makes it seem that the audio may be cutting off before the end of a story, accompanied by a change in narrator. However, this is the author's intention, so please continue to listen, and the stories will conclude themselves as intended.

©2004 David Mitchell; (P)2004 Random House Audio

What the Critics Say

  • 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Literary Fiction

"A remarkable book....It knits together science fiction, political thriller, and historical pastiche with musical virtuosity and linguistic exuberance: there won't be a bigger, bolder novel next year." (The Guardian)
"Audacious, dazzling." (Publishers Weekly)
"Cloud Atlas is a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative." (People)
"[Mitchell's] exuberant, Nabokovian delight in word play; his provocative grapplings with the great unknowables; and most of all his masterful storytelling: all coalesce to make Cloud Atlas an exciting, almost overwhelming masterpiece." (Washington Times)
"[Cloud Atlas] glows with a fizzy, dizzy energy, pregnant with possibility and whispering in your ear: listen closely to a story, any story, and you'll hear another story inside it, eager to meet the world." (The Village Voice)

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Customer Reviews

Showing: 1-5 of 41
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2 of 2 people found this review helpful:
Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0 "best combination of stories and authentic voices"
By: Quan (USA)
September 28, 2009
I am new to audible, and audio books in general. This book and my previous audio fiction "The Bonfire of Vanity" show me what I have been missing. Instead of reading a book and try to imagine the characters' voices, I now really enjoy voices done by professionals, whose voice add realistic dimensions to the story's characters.

I listen to Audible's Cloud Atlas and follow the narration with the book open. Bristish accents, illiterate Hawaii herder's accent for example all become alive and real, with emotions! (The book adds visual spelling of names, foreign phrases for memory's aide, and also add proper demarcation of italics or parentheses not easily discernible from narrator's pause or reading.)

A very well made audio production combined with an intricate thought provoking novel.
Rating 3.0Rating 3.0Rating 3.0Rating 3.0Rating 3.0 "Mixed"
By: Jennifer (austin, TX, USA)
July 18, 2009
I'm still uncertain if I liked Cloud Atlas. Some of the stories are interesting reads, but the whole thing together... well, I'm just not sure. There's some self congratulatory notes, and I prefer both my symbolism and overall message to be more subtle. The author beats the reader over the head with both. He lays out a clear implication using a birthmark, but then can't leave the reader to understand its import and instead spells it out as if we, the audience, are too stupid to understand. It's actually kind of insulting. Other than this- the individual voices the stories are told in are interesting and each is distinct enough from the others to be plausible. Worth reading if you don't mind being talked down to a little.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful:
Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0 "Utterly engrossing"
By: Jeffrey (Corvallis, OR, USA)
June 23, 2009
It's not surprising that I'd like this book, as I am in love with Italo Calvino's "If Upon a Winter's Night A Traveller," a book with a similar structure.

"Cloud Atlas," however, goes several steps beyond Calvino's work, for the six stories within are tied together not only by a common soul, but also by common themes, though each of the six takes place in very different times and styles, from 19th century Melville, to 1970s cheap thriller, to transgenic dystopian science fiction, and beyond.

Each of the stories is nested within the other, with all but the sixth stopping in mid-stride to take up the next. Unlike Calvino, however, Mitchell returns to each in reverse order.

A beautiful, engrossing work, expertly narrated. Highly recommended.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful:
Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0Rating 5.0 "Brilliant"
By: Cyndi (Charleston, WV, USA)
May 27, 2009
I've contemplated listening to this book for quite some time, but was wary because of some negative reviews. I am so glad I took the risk. This may be one of the most brilliantly written and narrated books I've experienced. Even if one doesn't immediately get all the connections between the stories, each one is noteworthy in inself. I found myself thinking back on it long after it was complete. I definitely need a second listen, and look forward to it.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful:
Rating 1.0Rating 1.0Rating 1.0Rating 1.0Rating 1.0 "Literary Stone Soup"
By: Terri (White Salmon, WA, USA)
January 09, 2009
This book attempts to be innovative and unique but as each story stone is dropped into the soup it becomes more convoluted...somehow the book needed some sort of ingredient to bind the various ingredients into a literary stone soup that could be nourishing, interesting, and intellectually palatable. As it was it was one of those recipes with so many ingredients that they could never simmer into an enjoyable "read."
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