David Mitchell · 2004 · global

David Mitchell's 2004 novel of six nested stories spanning from a Pacific voyage in 1850 to a post-apocalyptic Hawaii in the far future, each one interrupted and later resumed, each read or watched by the next. A recurring comet-shaped birthmark hints that a single soul threads them all. From the Chatham Islands to a Belgian chateau, 1970s California, a Hull nursing home and a corporate Korea, it is a meditation on power, predation and the persistence of the human spirit. These six points are settings nested across centuries, not a single journey; the links between them are the book's own strange threads.

1. 1
   Chatham Islands

   1850. Adam Ewing, an American notary becalmed in the Chatham Islands, fills a journal as he sails home across the Pacific, slowly poisoned by a doctor he trusts.

2. 2
   Zedelghem

   1931. Robert Frobisher, a penniless young composer, takes refuge at the chateau of Zedelghem in Belgium, writing the Cloud Atlas Sextet and reading Ewing's half-torn journal.

3. 3
   Buenas Yerbas

   1975. Luisa Rey, a journalist in the Californian city of Buenas Yerbas, hunts a deadly secret at a nuclear plant, while Frobisher's old letters surface in a record-shop bin.

4. 4
   Hull

   Today. Timothy Cavendish, a London publisher fleeing a debt, is tricked into a Hull nursing home, Aurora House, where he reads a manuscript of the Luisa Rey mystery.

5. 5
   Seoul

   A corporate future. In Nea So Copros, the Korea of tomorrow, the fabricant Sonmi-451 awakens to rebellion, and watches an old film of Cavendish's ordeal.

6. 6
   Hawaii

   After the Fall. On a Hawaii returned to the iron age, the goatherd Zachry hears the godlike Sonmi's last testament, and the long chain of stories folds back on itself.