Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies…

Manchester Literature Festival is thrilled to welcome author David Mitchell to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his epic, polyphonic novel Cloud Atlas.

Originally published in 2004, Cloud Atlas quickly became a firm favourite with readers, critics and booksellers. The Independent called it “a novel of breath-taking ambition and scale” whilst the New York Times raved “Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine.” Gloriously inventive and genre-defying, Cloud Atlas features six interconnected stories that take the reader on an adventure from the nineteenth century to a post-apocalypse future. The novel also erases the boundaries of time, genre and language, to offer an enthralling look at humanity’s will to power, and where it will lead us.

David Mitchell is the author of 9 novels including number9dream, Black Swan Green, The Bone Clocks and Utopia Avenue. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice and in 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer’s entire body of work. His screenwriting credits include the TV shows Pachinko, Sense8, and the movie Matrix: Resurrections.

Join us to see David discuss creating Cloud Atlas; his storytelling techniques and fictional worlds; the film adaptation by the Wachowskis; his screenwriting work and his literary and cultural influences. Hosted by critic and podcast presenter Naomi Frisby.

NB: A special 20th anniversary edition of Cloud Atlas will be available to buy on the night, from our bookshop partner Waterstones Deansgate, featuring a Foreword by Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow), an Afterword by David and special sprayed edges and endpapers.