They each reach conclusions of their own while feeding into a grand central conceit about the way those desiring power destroy the thing they crave. Only the sixth reaches a conclusion, while also acting as a kind of narrative mirror, since, afterwards, the other narratives are completed in reverse chronological order. The first five parts all end in cliffhangers. Sixth, we follow a tribesman called Zach'ry through a stone age version of a more distant future, where only a few people carry the guttering flame of civilisation after man's 'hunger for more' has 'ripped up the skies, boiled up the seas and poisoned the soil'.

The fifth moves into the future where Somni 451, a genetically engineered 'fabricant', answers a series of questions about her 'ascension' from a world of ignorance, slavery and dishing up food in an underground fast-food restaurant.

The fourth part takes place in the here and now, following Thomas Cavendish, the 60-year-old owner of a vanity publishing house, who finds himself trapped in an old people's home. Third, there is a 1970s Erin Brockovich-style environmental thriller about journalist Louisa Rey's death-defying attempts to get hold of a report written by a scientist (named Rufus Sixsmith) detailing the design problems of a proposed nuclear reactor. Frobisher, on the lam from debt and disgrace in England, wheedles his way into the house of famous ageing composer Vyvyan Ayrs, working as his amanuensis and sleeping with his wife on the side. Second comes a series of high camp letters written by Robert Frobisher to his lover Rufus Sixsmith shortly after the first world war. A summary (I was going to write 'brief summary' but the complexity of the book makes that impossible) should give some idea of the scale of Mitchell's ambition – or of the problem, depending on your point of view.įirst, we are taken to the mid-19th century and the South Seas, where Adam Ewing, a notary from San Francisco, writes an increasingly unsettling journal of his journey to the remote Chatham Islands and the abusive nature of the hierarchy on his ship. The book comes in 11 parts, containing six separate narratives, all written in different styles and spanning thousands of years and miles.

Cloud atlas novel by david mitchell