Cloud Atlas: A Novel (Modern Library (Hardcover))

Brings the magic of reincarnation to life in a great world changing story.

Surely a remarkable writing endeavour - albeit too baroque at times…… unfinished, unfortunately.What’s an intriguing, elusive build up of a complex plot, deflate disappointingly in the last couple of pages, with the author just giving his vision for a better world.This book delivers on many levels…… the ending is not there.

A very entertaining and at some point challenging book, with definitely some good sparks and considerations on human relationships and on bigotry. I found most of the book truly absorbing (the only exception being Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After), and enjoyed each of the story for different reasons: for the very different atmosphere they were able to set and for the ever-changing tone of the narrators. I roared with laughter with the Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish and I got hooked by The First Luisa Rey Mystery. An Orison of Sonmi451 left me with the after-taste of a good old dystopian novel of the 20th Century, although some of the themes were definitely not unheard of.As a language freak, I enjoyed how Mitchell played with English and attempted (and sometimes managed) to convey a different sensibility through a different variety of language, thus transforming the reader's point of view with the mere switch of a register. The one part where he probably overshot was again the central story, whose futuristic broken English failed in my opinion at fitting the spirit and struggles of a post-apocalyptic society.One point that I thought could be improved was the connection through the story-lines and through their characters. Although there are some cross references and they are all readers and writers of each other's stories, I would have enjoyed a tighter correlation (that maybe would have been predictable and would thus have spoilt the fun).It perhaps lacks the strong message of a classic, and might therefore soon be forgotten but it's for sure an enjoyable reading and a novel enjoyable by both more light-hearted and insightful readers.

I first read this book when it came out in the early noughties, and was blown away by both the inventive structure and compelling storytelling. I recently saw the film (a great adaptation, incidentally), which inspired me to do a cover to cover reread and it lived up to my memories.I'm a big believer in not drawing too distinct a line between "genre fiction" (fantasy, paranormal, sci-fi etc) and more high-brow, literary novels. This book is one of the best examples of the idea that it's possible to write a novel that both tells a fantastical story and does amazing things with prose, structure and narrative. The fact that it was nominated for both the Booker Prize and the X prize tells its own story.The book is almost a collection of seven short stories. With the exception of the one in the middle, which runs straight through, each gets to a halfway point and is then interrupted by the next story, which follows a character who is reading the text the reader has just read. Halfway through the book, it then starts working it's way back through the stories, completing each of them in turn. Throughout, there are hints that all of the stories' main characters may be reincarnations of each other (most obviously, they all have the same comet shaped birthmark, but there seem to be some overlap of memories and fears), but the author doesn't make it simple - the timeline doesn't quite seem to allow it, and some characters seem to be fictional within other character's universes.It's the intricate way that the stories fit together that I really love about this book, especially the little clues and the self-references, whether its a piece of music composed by one character that has the same structure, a character dreaming about something that happens to another protagonist centuries in the future, or a character wondering whether the journal he is reading (which readers have also just read) is a forgery, on the basis that some of what is said seems to convenient. This is definitely a book that benefits from a re-read and some close scrutiny of the text.That said, it's not just structure over substance. Each of the individual stories are beautifully plotted and written. The brilliant thing is that they are not only set in wildly different time periods (the earliest is in the 1800s, the latest in a far distant post-apocalyptic future) and geographical locations, they are also very different genres and written in a corresponding style. So the first story is meant to be the journal of a nineteenth lawyer on a sea voyage - it's written in diary format, and in the very mannered, formal language of the time, while a 1970s thriller is written like a pulpy novel, and so on. Mitchell masters all of these styles beautifully and has a bit of fun playing around with them.Most fundamentally, however, when all the stylistic cleverness and post-modern twistiness is stripped away, there are still seven good, strong stories. Inevitably, in this sort of book, each reader, even if they love the whole thing, is going to find themselves enjoying some sections more than others. For me, a story (told in the form of letters) of a debauched 1930s musician and another focussing on a rebel clone in a futuristic Korea are up their with my favourite stories in their own right. In particular, I found the latter story reminded my of Never Let Me Go, which came out at more or less the same time, but I actually found the Cloud Atlas chapter to be better, even though it was only one small part of a much bigger whole. The seventies thriller and the modern day tale of a hapless literary agent were also genuinely enjoyable reads. Despite my love of the book, I have to admit that I found the sea journal and in particular, the post-apocalyptic tale (told as an oral history, in a made up pseudo-English reminiscent of that in A Clockwork Orange) to be rather heavy-going. In those cases, while I still admired the author's talent and the contribution they made to the whole, I struggled to actively enjoy them. Interestingly, I've seen other people who feel exactly the opposite way about which stories do and don't work - they are all extremely well written and imaginative, beyond that, it's really a matter of personal taste. I would, however, suggest that if the first story doesn't grab you, you still push on and see whether you enjoy the others more.Finally, not content with both the stories and the metaphysics, the book as a whole has a lot of quite deep things to say about human nature, especially the destructive will to dominate others. As one characters puts it, "the weak are meat, the strong do eat." Various other interesting themes also flow through the book, enriching it without it ever starting to feel like a lecture.It's by no means the easiest read. You'll have to work a little just to get through it, and to get the most out of it and make all the connections, it's worth going slowly and/or re-reading. There are also likely to be some sections that readers don't enjoy as much as others. Nonetheless, I'd hugely recommend this to anyone who wants to try something different, to have their mind twisted, and ultimately, to enjoy a good story and some seriously impressive writing.

Le livre est une merveille, d'autres l'ont analysé mieux que je ne pourrais le faire, Mais ... que dire de la traduction ?J'irai jusqu'à dire qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une traduction à proprement parler mais d'une "adaptation" . J'avais envie de tester l'apparente performance du traducteur, c'est pourquoi j'ai acheté la version originale, et bien m'en a pris . Le traducteur a la légèreté d'un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine . Il supprime des paragraphes entiers, invente des mots en bouleversant les paragraphes pour pouvoir les y insérer, et encore je n'ai pas terminé ma lecture car la langue est difficile mais le livre vaut la peine de faire l 'effort .On a d'autres exemples dans la littérature, Baudelaire traduisant Edgar Poe par exemple, mais n'est pas Baudelaire qui veut ...

Warnung! Hier handelt es sich um Literatur. Ich will ja niemand abschrecken, aber wer nicht Englisch auf Muttersprachler- Niveau spricht, der hat eine harte Zeit vor sich. Ich habe nach etwa der Hälfte des Buches aufgegeben, als die Geschichte von Sloosha's crossing begann. Der Autor benutzt hier eine Kunstsprache, die nur schwer zu entschlüsseln ist.Ich habe mir dann die deutsche Version des Buches besorgt. Allein die Übersetzung ist ein Kunstwerk für sich.Zum Inhalt haben meine Vor-Rezensenten ausführlich berichtet. Es geht um den (anscheinend unvermeidlichen) Niedergang der Zivilisation, und immer wieder um Freiheit und ihre Unterdrückung. Das Buch hinterlässt (zumindest bei mir) ein merkwürdig kraftvolles Gefühl, sich einzumischen, politisch aktiv zu werden. Es macht überdeutlich, dass aktuelle Schlagworte der Politik, wie Atomausstieg, Integration von Fremden und Reglementierung das Bankensystems nicht etwa Beiwerk, sondern die Basis unserer Zukunft sind.Eine kleine Krtik muss ich dennoch anbringen: Die immer wieder durchschimmernde Philosophie Nietsches, die den "Willen zur Macht" als alleinige Triebfeder von Menschen und die "Wiederkehr des immer Gleichen" als Struktur der menschlichen Kulturen ansieht greift zu kurz. Menschen sind nicht so einfach. Hoffentlich.Das beste Buch, das ich seit vielen Jahren gelesen habe.

Esta es la novela en que se basa la película homónima de los hermanos Warchowski. En ella se nos cuenta las historias de 6 personajes de distintas épocas, desde mitad del siglo XIX, a un futuro lejano en que la civilización tal y como la conocemos ha desaparecido. La forma de narrar estas hsitorias, de enlazarlas unas con otras es mu original y sugerente, usando referencias que resuenan en la mente del lector. Toda una delicia de leer por el estilo de escritura y el gran manejo de los efectos narrativos y estilísticos por parte del autor, que además sirve como reinvidicación contra el colonialismo, así como la dominación de pueblos y personas por parte de los poderosos y privilegiados.

1931 Robert Frobisher (the hero of the novel’s second narrative) composes the Cloud Atlas Sextet in and near Bruges (which is in Belgium BTW – no pun intended). It consists of six solos interrupting each other at a crucial point in the composition only to come full circle and end at the beginning – “Violin note, misplayed, hideously -” (Kindle version p.461)…This pretty much wraps up the novel Cloud Atlas as well – six individual, interrupted narratives covering a time span from early 19th century into a far post-apocalyptic future, like a Rorschach test in almost bilateral symmetry split in the middle by an uninterrupted narration of the farthest future to pick up the previous threads in inverted order – ending at the beginning.What makes this book so special and so different? I can only speak from my personal experience and can say it was probably the most fascinating and most frustrating book I have ever read. Fascinating because the author manages to weave a net around me, drawing me in, leaving clues for me to connect all the dots only to find myself let down in the end because all my best laid plans and theories are worth zilch. Frustrating because the author won’t connect all the dots for me and will leave questions unanswered.So here I am, about 24h hours after having finished the first reading of this truly extraordinary book and I can’t seem to wrap my mind around anything else but thinking about what I actually think the book is trying to tell me.Is mankind circling the drain? Are we ever going to learn, or are the plans laid down by the architects of human life everlastingly flawed and we make the same mistakes over and over and over again – possibly just getting more sophisticated in our ways to oppress/ kill / enslave the weak. Can one person make a difference – so, is there hope? Is there a character – a spirit – a soul – so precious it’ll last through the centuries, maybe reincarnated to remind us of something? Or are we all responsible of the effects of our small actions in the grander scheme of things?…or am I just losing it?Quote from Kindle Version page 508“… only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop a limitless ocean!”“Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”