Cloud Atlas

A Novel

By: David Mitchell

Narrated by: Scott Brick, Cassandra Campbell, Kim Mai Guest, Kirby Heyborne, John Lee, Richard Matthews

Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

By the New York Times best-selling author of The Bone Clocks

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in 21st-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical, and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite.... Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter.... From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life.... And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neo-capitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a post-apocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.

But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, 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 videogame, 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

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

Critic reviews

• 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Literary Fiction

"[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)

"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)

Fantastic Performances

It was a delight to listen to this rich philosophical narrative so well read.

don't be deceived by the movie

the story is a lesson and the concept is so pertinent for the world especially the place were popularism is replacing logic and reason.

Ambitious doesn’t begin to describe it....

In Cloud Atlas, Mitchell attempts to describe the kismet-like interconnections of life. His thesis is this: small acts have repercussions across millennia, for good or bad... depending on the intention of those acts. In other words, we are responsible for the world we create.

It is a call for personal-responsibility that resonates clearly in this era of cynicism, tribalism, and ever-increasing corpo-fascist ideology.

Great book, great cast performance

What made the experience of listening to Cloud Atlas the most enjoyable?

This was a very good book and having a cast of voice actors reading each section of the book was a good choice. I did not find the time jumps confusing, but I knew they would happen.

immensly entertaining and wise

Loved the book, Full good action, sense of humor and big truths that the movie doesn't reflect. Each setting portays a different struggle, and several powerful messages: There will always be evil, but There is Good. We need to believe World is Good to make it such. our lives should be lives with the purpose of good and service as we each make a difference, every day.

Pay attention to not lose the thread of the story

I was satisfied with all of the portrayals by the readers.

I do think that sometimes the author let the story meander too much or focused on unnecessary detail. Since the story itself weaves from one path to another this can be tiring and distracting (to have such meandering with in the individual stories).

That said I loved the construction of the novel. I also loved the comparison of the stories own structure to that of the sextet of the cloud atlas.

It is an extremely ambitious novel which I believe deserves acclaim for its presentation alone. I will say however I wanted more out of some of the stories.

Wonderful narrators

The full cast with their distinctive voices really add to this book. It's a complex book, but definitely worth the effort.

Enfuriatingly Amazing

If you could sum up Cloud Atlas in three words, what would they be?

Exercise in Phonetic-Rendering

What was one of the most memorable moments of Cloud Atlas?

The most engaging moment in Cloud Atlas is when you really GET how the story is structured and put together; the way it flows... of course, this doesn't happen till half way through the book -- but that makes it all the more amazing (and enfuriating)

What does the narrators bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Every narrator gives something to this book that wouldn't have been there if I were reading it by myself -- especially the guy who picks up half-way through. It is this narrator who is reading the phonetically rendered part of the book (the part written in an extreme dialect) which becomes spell binding.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

There was a lot going on in here. Some moments you wish you could download the book wholesale into your brain; others the pace gives you something to think about.

A tour de force

A magnificently crafted Russian doll of a novel. The performance are up to the challenge, which is saying rather a lot.

Only ok

Disjointed, too long and at times it was boring. It did have a couple of stories that were interesting though.