Cloud Atlas is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. It was published in 2004. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction award and the Richard & Judy "Book of the Year" award. The year it was published, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and Arthur C. Clarke Award, among other accolades. Unusually, it received awards from both the general literary community and from the speculative fiction community. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and featuring an ensemble cast, was released in 2012.
Cloud Atlas is a work combining metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction. Its text is 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. The title was inspired by the piece of music of the same …
Cloud Atlas is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. It was published in 2004. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction award and the Richard & Judy "Book of the Year" award. The year it was published, it was short-listed for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and Arthur C. Clarke Award, among other accolades. Unusually, it received awards from both the general literary community and from the speculative fiction community. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and featuring an ensemble cast, was released in 2012.
Cloud Atlas is a work combining metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction. Its text is 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. The title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. The author has said that the book is about reincarnation and the universality of human nature, and the title references a changing landscape (a "cloud") over manifestations of fixed human nature (the "atlas"). It is not a direct reference to a cloud atlas.
Mehrere lose zusammenhängende Geschichten die zu verschiedenen Zeiten spielen. Ein Großteil davon eigentlich recht interessant - aber am Ende steht man planlos da und fragt sich was der Autor eigentlich sagen wollte.
Und dazu dann noch ein ganzer Abschnitt in einem sehr anstrengendem Stil geschrieben - Keine Ahnung ob der Teil nur in der Übersetzung so schlimm ist.
This was good. Not mind-bendingly great - and I'm sad it wasn't better. It is still a good book. I like stories within stories, I like strange connections through time. I didn't pick up on strong enough connections throughout the stories. I guess I'll see the movie, which should be a bit more condensed and might make the connections clearer.
Things which are good about this book: A new style for every story. Mitchell switches well between voices and they all read very well. Great cliffhangers at the end of each first chapter.
Not so lovely: * Terrible resolutions. The last half of this book could have been really explosive, but I felt each story wrapped up in very small ways.
Cloud Atlas is a really hard book to review; it starts off as a Journal circa 1850 documenting a voyage home from the Chatham Islands, then it’s a series of letters from a 1930’s English musician to a Belgium composer, then a journalist from 1975 investigating for a novel that will blow the whistle on a new nuclear power plant , a 21st century publisher is fleeing from gangsters in a movie dramatization, a dystopian future story told from genetically-engineered clone’s perspective and finally the post-apocalyptic future where technology is all whipped out. Confusing? Well this book does all come together in to make Cloud Atlas a truly interesting book to read but I don’t think it worked as intended.
I think author David Mitchell is too clever for his own good in this book. The stories do all come together and he really shows off by writing each section …
Cloud Atlas is a really hard book to review; it starts off as a Journal circa 1850 documenting a voyage home from the Chatham Islands, then it’s a series of letters from a 1930’s English musician to a Belgium composer, then a journalist from 1975 investigating for a novel that will blow the whistle on a new nuclear power plant , a 21st century publisher is fleeing from gangsters in a movie dramatization, a dystopian future story told from genetically-engineered clone’s perspective and finally the post-apocalyptic future where technology is all whipped out. Confusing? Well this book does all come together in to make Cloud Atlas a truly interesting book to read but I don’t think it worked as intended.
I think author David Mitchell is too clever for his own good in this book. The stories do all come together and he really shows off by writing each section in the best genre style to suit what is happening but he is just doing too much in this book. I feel like I’m just starting to get invested in the story of one protagonist and then Mitchell jumps to the next one without any sense of resolution. Sure he does return to each story a second time around but by then I feel like it’s too late for me.
David Mitchell really flexes his literary muscles in the book and he is a wonderful write but there is so much happening in this book and I never felt like he achieve what he was hoping for. I’m not sure cutting from six to three or four story arcs would have helped the book but it might have helped the reader become more invested. I particularly liked the thriller style of the investigative journalist and that gangster story line of the publisher but when their story is just getting exciting it’s all over and we have to move on to the next one.
Cloud Atlas is an interesting, clever book but this doesn’t make it a good book; I enjoyed parts of it and other parts infuriated me. I will say I’m glad to have read it before the movie adaptation is released but it’s not something I ever want to revisit again. I get that he is trying to do a novel about evolution or reincarnation; as each protagonist bares the same birth mark but that element of the book never really went anywhere. I know some people really love this book but I felt like it was too much of a show off. I’d like to read a David Mitchell book where he sticks to one genre instead of all of them.
Almost 5 stars but I spent a little time aggravated by the structure in the first third or so of the book. A little patience to get through that is rewarded, however.
David Mitchell is without a doubt my favourite living author.
Cloud Atlas is his finest work so far. Mitchell is superb at constructing a related series of stories and characters that simply jump off the pages. The writing style changes so completely and convincingly from one story to another that it's almost hard to believe that they were written by the same author.
