SPOTLIGHT ON:
DAVID MITCHELL:
UBER-NOVELIST
Sunday 17 May,
6pm
Court
Theatre Book here
David
Mitchell is one of the most exciting British novelists
to emerge in the last 20 years. He was named as one of Granta’s Best
of Young British Novelists in 2003, alongside Zadie Smith, Hari Kunzru
and Sarah Waters, among others. He is the author of six novels: Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas
(shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2004), Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of
Jacob de Zoet, and The
Bone Clocks, all three of which were longlisted for the Man
Booker. He also co-translated the book The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a
Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism from Japanese. He lives
in Ireland with his wife and two children.
Some interesting facts:
• David Mitchell recently collaborated with Kate Bush
on her live show ‘Before the Dawn’ writing a scene of dialogue to
accompany her performance of the 1985 song Watching Me, Watching You.
Mitchell however remains very tight-lipped about the conversations he
had with Bush, preferring to protect her privacy.
• Parts of Cloud
Atlas are set in the 19th century on the Chatham Islands,
where Mitchell travelled before writing the book. In the book’s
acknowledgements, he notes A
Land Apart, a collaboration between New Zealand historian
Michael King and photographer Robin Morrison, as a useful research
source; and again in The
Bone Clocks, which features a fictional descendant of one
of the Cloud
Atlas characters.
• Cloud
Atlas was made into an unusual film by the Wachowskis, who
also made the Matrix
films and the recent Jupiter
Ascending. The Canary Islands, with its white sand, clear
waters and hot sun, were a slightly puzzling stand-in for the rather
more cold and blustery Chatham Islands.
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