Content levels
Trigger warnings
Positive tags
Protagonist archetypes
Themes
Synopsis
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; an ambitious journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing the mendicant and violent family of his star author; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- 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, 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
Tags
Is Cloud Atlas appropriate for my child?
Suitable for most readers 16 and up.
Complex literary sci-fi spanning six time periods with mature themes including violence, exploitation, and the darker aspects of human nature. Contains some sexual content and strong language.
What to know going in
This book has moderate violence, moderate sexual content, and moderate language. Content notes include slavery, captivity, and death (see the full list above).
Who'll love this
Older teens who enjoy ambitious, literary fiction with interconnected stories across different historical periods will find this intellectually engaging.