Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas, published in 2004, is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction award, and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and was short-listed for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and Arthur C. Clarke Award. Unusually, it received awards from both the general literary community and the speculative fiction community. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and featuring an ensemble cast, was released in 2012. The book combines metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction, with interconnected nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawai'i in a distant post-apocalyptic future. Its title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Rather than being a reference to the cloud atlases used in meteorology, Mitchell has stated that the title and the book address reincarnation and the universality of human nature, with the title referring to a changing landscape (a "cloud") over manifestations of fixed human nature (the "atlas"). Plot summary The book consists of six nested stories; each is read or observed by a main character of the next, progressing in time through the central sixth story. The first five stories are each interrupted at a pivotal moment. After the sixth story, the others are resolved in reverse chronological order. Each section's protagonist reads or observes the chronologically earlier work in the chain.