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)

Interesting and Confusing

The short stories are interesting and some of them even fascinating, especially considering they have a such different styles and settings. What ultimately confused and even irritated me was the way the author tried to connect the stories. The stories really do not have anything in common (other than the author) and the attempt to relate them to each other seemed artificial and confusing (especially in the audio format).

Some good storytelling but not cohesive

I enjoyed a couple of the stories. Did not enjoy a couple of them too. The old guy trapped in a retirement home had me laughing out loud. I kept waiting for the author to tie all the stories together, and I was rather shocked when it ended. Felt kind of lazy to me. Like maybe the author had a few short stories lying about, so he slapped a birthmark on the protagonist and called it reincarnation.

A Symphony of Words With Movement and Depth.

Where does Cloud Atlas rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is one of the better listens out there. Many readers voice the various perspectives and bring entire casts of lively characters to each section. Each reader is like a change from one movement in a classical symphony to the next, and I think that may be what the author was looking for.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The Ascended servant from the 4th arc is by far my favorite. Sure, her story is wrapped in classic dystopian sci-fi, but beyond that her story is that of an underdog's, or Woman versus Society. I root for her from the start, even though you know from the situation of her present that she is already lost.

Which scene was your favorite?

I love the scene where the author of "Knuckle Sandwich" throws his harshest critic from a high balcony to his death. That scene is a gem and a keeper.

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

Because of the nature of this story's construction, I found it best to take in sections. I listened to one entire arc at a time, but paused after the completion of each, because this is the kind of book that demands time for rumination. Do not speed through it, or you will miss grand subtleties.

Any additional comments?

Cloud Atlas is a composite masterpiece. Gets 4 stars overall because it is complex, and sometimes it takes pains to thread its core themes to each and every narrative junction, and that is the worse thing I have to say about it.

My favorite book so far

This book contains many stories within, and so there is a different narrator for each one. All of them made this book so much more enjoyable! This book is very entertaining in its story telling and at the same time, goes deep in existential philosophy, not in a boring kind of way though. Very highly recommended for your entertainment and your soul.

FIVE PLUS

One of the best books i've ever listened to!
OK, first of all please note i'm not a native english speaker, so forgive my rudimentary words, since to say what this book made me feel and think i'll be short of the right expressions.Besides, i've read many of the reviews and there isn't much left to say!

So, first of all I think the form in which is arranged and the way it is written is brilliant. It goes from formal almost poetic to actual to kind of futuristic to slang and it takes you to such places and times leaving you mid-story hanging at times with the feeling of something terrible about to happen and unable to stop it. And then they start to link one with the other making sense and showing you (me, us) the consequences of our acts or lack of them....Here I leave you fellow listener hoping that you will be curious enough to go to this audio and discover it for yourself and thoroughly enjoy it !

One more very important thing: I STRONGLY BELIEVE it should be LISTEN TO more than read since the cast of narrators do a GREAT job. They impersonate the characters soooooo well is audio bliss! I just can not imagine without the voices, i confess there were more than one part i had to go back, over and over but of course, it is harder for me since it is not my native tongue.

The only fault to the hole production for me is the lack of a soundtrack.

Intriguing story and unusual composition

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

While the book itself is composed in a somewhat disconnected way, the audio book is produced in such a way to make it relatively easy to follow.

Any additional comments?

I found the book interesting, and might even listen to it again.

Great book. I watch the movie first before

I watched the movie first prior to picking up the book. The movie was a fairly good representation of what happened in the book
but with stunning visuals and a great score. the book however gave much greater character development and world building and internal character monologues. voice acting in the audiobook was superb,each of the six stories were narrated by a different voice actor who brought their own unique flair to each story

A disjointed but enjoyable collection of stories

I missed out on the original Cloud Atlas hype train when it came out and I never saw the movie. But I've heard buzz about this book before and I've been curious about it for a while.

However, I was surprised to find that this just wasn't that great of a book.

It's not a bad book, per se, but it's the perfect example of an overly ambitious author shooting for the stars, hoping for literary gold, and then falling flat on his face in execution. It attempts to be weighty, and meaningful, but is way too overt with it's themes, and the narrative structure doesn't really serve much of a purpose besides a gimmick as far as I'm concerned.

The structure of the book, is 6 stories nested into each other, each one representing a different time period with different characters, with each story pressing on the same themes of the evils of greed, capitalism, technology, etc.

The stories themselves are hit or miss. I really enjoyed The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish and Sloosha's Crossin'. The Timothy Cavendish story is the best just because it's the only story that seemed fun, enjoyable, and relatable characters, while the Sloosha's Crossin story did the best job of delivering on the novel's themes.

The other 4 stories weren't necessarily bad, but the nesting structure seemed pointless to me, and none of them really stuck with me like the other 2.

The performance by the multiple readers delivering this audiobook though, is spot on. Because it's a sequence of 6 stories each story has it's own narrator and each narrator seems perfectly suited for the story he/she is performing. I can't fault them for anything in that regard.

In general though, it's not a bad read, but most of it felt pretentious and heavy handed. Especially how in the bookend story (beginning and end of the novel) it ends by just stating the theme of the novel outright, which I found incredibly grating.

Great Story, Gripping Characters

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

The voice actors did an amazing job of immersing you into the characters' worlds. The book is very thorough in its details of the time period and culture, and the readers did a great job of making feel completely natural.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Tim Caverndish, because he was such a real and understandable person, and his story was full of good humor.

Any additional comments?

This book is very wordy, but that's fine. I just wish it was less profane in some stories. The profanity was completely natural and called for in every situation, BUT I think it could have been avoided in a lot of cases. Otherwise, I would recommend this lengthy novel to anyone looking for a good historic fiction / science fiction.

Interesting & well read!

I enjoyed the unique plot, individual stories, and the subtle/not-so-subtle plot connections between characters. I note some reviewers were concerned about losing details in the audio version. I may have missed a couple, but didn't find it a problem overall. Very well written, interesting use of language, and great performances. I recommend!