David Mitchell

¿Puede el amor, el poder del bien incluso en la adversidad, perdurar más allá de la vida que conocemos y prolongarse a través de siglos y lugares? Seis vidas se entrecruzan aquí de forma inesperada a fin de dibujar un mundo, profetico y extraño a la vez, en el que la historia se puede reescribir. Los seis protagonistas de la novela, ajenos a la trascendencia de sus acciones, tienen un papel mucho mas relevante en la posteridad de lo que pueden imaginar, en escenarios tan disimiles como un viaje por la Polinesia a bordo de un galeon en el siglo xix, la California de los años sesenta, o una isla en un futuro postapocaliptico. Todos ellos comparten un destino comun, el afan de poder que se sucede una civilizacion tras otra, y la busqueda del amor como salvacion.

«Como viejo rockero, tengo que decir que me encantó la nueva novela de David Mitchell sobre el florecimiento del rock and roll británico a mediados y finales de los sesenta. Es un éxito en mi lista B

Jason Taylor, un adolescente casi trece años, narra su vida en un pueblo inglés a principios de los 80. Es la época de la guerra de las Malvinas y del gobierno de Margaret Thatcher pero también del Spectrum, los Talking Heads y los Duran Duran, los matones de la escuela, las niñas inalcanzables, los primeros cigarrillos... Sensible e imaginativo, Jason es tartamudo y se las apaña con miles de trucos para ocultar su tartamudeo que lo estrangula cuando quiere hablar y siempre lo deja colgado en el peor momento. Evitar el ridiculo resulta agotador.

En El atlas de las nubes, de David Mitchell, autor de obras como El bosque del cisne negro o Mil otoños, nos haremos la siguiente pregunta: ¿Puede el amor, el poder del bien incluso en la adversidad, perdurar mas alla de la vida que conocemos y prolongarse a traves de siglos y lugares? El atlas de las nubes es una novela de narrativa extranjera que da la vuelta al mundo y recorre desde el siglo xix hasta un futuro apocaliptico, a traves de seis historias entrelazadas.El relato se abre en 1850 con el regreso del notario estadounidense Adam Ewing desde las islas Chatham a su California natal. Durante el viaje, Ewing traba amistad con un medico, el doctor Goose, que comienza a tratarle de una extraña enfermedad causada por un parasito cerebral... Repentinamente, la accion se traslada a 1931 en Belgica, donde Robert Frobisher, un compositor bisexual que ha sido desheredado, se introduce en el hogar de un artista enfermizo, su seductora esposa y su nubil hija... De ahi saltamos a la Costa Oeste en la decada de los setenta, cuando Luisa Rey destapa una red de avaricia y crimen que pone en peligro su vida... Y, del mismo modo, con identica maestria, viajamos a la ignominiosa Inglaterra de nuestros dias, a un superestado coreano del futuro proximo regido por un capitalismo desbocado y, finalmente, a Hawai, a una Edad de Hierro post-apocaliptica que corresponde a los ultimos dias de la historia. Sin embargo, la historia tampoco termina ahi. La narrativa vuelve, como si de un bumeran se tratara, en el tiempo y en el espacio hasta el punto de partida recorriendo, en sentido inverso, la trayectoria trazada. Durante la travesia, Mitchell va revelando los lazos que unen a personajes tan distintos, el modo en que se entrecruzan sus destinos y la forma en la que sus almas se desplazan a traves del tiempo como las nubes por el horizonte. David Mitchell, es un visionario posmoderno que se mueve con maestria por una multiplicidad de estilos y sabe combinar a la perfeccion los ingredientes basicos de la novela de aventuras con una debilidad muy nabokoviana por el puzzle, un ojo clinico para retratar a los personajes y un gusto por la reflexion filosofica y cientifica en la linea de Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami y Philip K. Dick.

Dejima, comptoir de la Compagnie néerlandaise des Indes orientales, ou la promesse d'une fortune facile. Jeune clerc, Jacob de Zoet débarque sur l'île en 1799, bercé par l'espoir d'un mariage à son retour. Là, il est comme envoûté par Mlle Aibagawa, douce sage-femme au visage étrangement brûlé. Or la demoiselle est enlevée sous ses yeux par le diabolique Enomoto et conduite sur le mont Shiranui...

Jacob de Zoet se encuentra en Deshima, el único enclave comercial japonés que durante la era Edo permite la presencia extranjera. Este joven holandés espera poder reunir en cinco años el dinero suficiente para casarse con la bella Anne. Sin embargo, su estancia se complica cuando conoce a Orito, una hermosa e inteligente comadrona que tras la muerte de su padre, el prestigioso doctor Aibagawa, desaparece misteriosamente. En medio de las intrigas de comerciantes, timadores y colegas cuyo proceder parece haberse contagiado del oscuro clima de la isla, Jacob intentara descifrar el contenido de un misterioso pergamino que parece contener la clave para comprender la desaparicion de Orito, su amor prohibido, y los secretos que rodean a la enigmatica Hermandad del monte Shiranui. Se desarrolla cuidadosamente, como las flores japonesas que brotan cuando se ponen sobre el agua. MICHIKO KAKUTANI

David Mitchell comes home - to England, 1982, and the cusp of adolescence. Jason Taylor is 13, doomed to be growing up in the most boring family in the deadest village ("Black Swan Green") in the dullest county (Worcestershire) in the most tedious nation (England) on earth. And he stammers. 13 chapters, each as self-contained as a short story, follow 13 months in his life as he negotiates the pitfalls of school and home and contends with bullies, girls and family politics. In the distance, the Falklands conflict breaks out; close at hand, the village mobilises against a gypsy camp. And through Jason's eyes, we see what he doesn't know he knows - and watch unfold what will make him wish his life had been as uneventful as he had believed. Vividly capturing the mood of the times - high unemployment, Cold War politics and the sunset of agrarian England - this is at once a portrait of an era and of an age: the black hole between childhood and teenagerdom.

Es un enero frío y lluvioso en el pueblo inglés de Black Swan Green, y Jason Taylor, un niño de trece años, tartamudo encubierto y poeta a regañadientes, se espera un año aburrídisimo en el pueblo más muerto del planeta. No cuenta con que tendra que verselas con los matones del colegio, los conflictos latentes en su familia, la guerra de las Malvinas, una exotica refugiada belga, una invasion de gitanos oprimidos y los caprichos de esas misteriosas criaturas conocidas como las niñas. La ultima novela de David Mitchell es una cronica minuciosa de trece meses en el agujero negro que separa la niñez de la adolescencia, con el telon de fondo de una Inglaterra rural a punto de desaparecer y todavia ensombrecida por la Guerra Fria. Ironica, amarga, comica y llena de vida, El bosque del cisne negro es la obra mas aguda y cautivadora de Mitchell hasta la fecha.

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the "high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island" that is the Japanese Empire´s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. In 2007, Time magazine named David Mitchell one of the most influential novelists in the world. He has twice been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The New York Times Book Review called him simply "a genius."

Be transported to a place like no other: a tiny, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki, for two hundred years the sole gateway between Japan and the West. Here, in the dying days of the 18th-century, a young Dutch clerk arrives to make his fortune. Instead he loses his heart. Step onto the streets of Dejima and mingle with scheming traders, spies, interpreters, servants and concubines as two cultures converge. In a tale of integrity and corruption, passion and power, the key is control -- of riches and minds, and over death itself.

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the Japanese Empire's single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, and costly courtesans comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland. But Jacob's original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured midwife to the city's powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken—the consequences of which will extend beyond Jacob's worst imaginings.

Imagine an empire that has shut out the world for a century and a half. No one can leave, foreigners are excluded, their religions banned and their ideas deeply mistrusted. Yet a narrow window onto this nation-fortress still exists: an artificial walled island connected to a mainland port, and manned by a handful of European traders. And locked as the land-gate may be, it cannot prevent the meeting of minds -- or hearts. The nation was Japan, the port was Nagasaki and the island was Dejima, to where David Mitchell's panoramic novel transports us in the year 1799. For one Dutch clerk, Jacob de Zoet, a dark adventure of duplicity, love, guilt, faith and murder is about to begin -- and all the while, unbeknownst to him and his feuding compatriots, the axis of global power is turning...

By the author of THE THOUSAND AUTUMNS OF JACOB DE ZOET, David Mitchell's bestselling and Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, one of Richard & Judy's 100 Books of the Decade, CLOUD ATLAS has now been adapted for film. The major motion picture, directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Grant. The novel features six characters in interlocking stories, each interrupting the one before it: a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified dinery server on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation. The narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changes in ways great and small.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014 One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'. Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking ...The Bone Clocks follows the twists and turns of Holly's life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast as Europe's oil supply dries up - a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes - daughter, sister, mother, guardian - is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon. Metaphysical thriller, meditation on mortality and chronicle of our self-devouring times, this kaleidoscopic novel crackles with the invention and wit that have made David Mitchell one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. Here is fiction at its most spellbinding and memorable best.

¿Puede el amor, el poder del bien incluso en la adversidad, perdurar más allá de la vida que conocemos y prolongarse a través de siglos y lugares? Seis vidas se entrecruzan aquí de forma inesperada a

The dazzling new novel from the author of Cloud Atlas, at once the kaleidoscopic story of an unusual woman''s life, a metaphysical thriller and a profound meditation on mortality and survival.Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014Run away, one drowsy summer''s afternoon, with Holly Sykes: wayward teenager, broken-hearted rebel and unwitting pawn in a titanic, hidden conflict.Over six decades, the consequences of a moment''s impulse unfold, drawing an ordinary woman into a world far beyond her imagining. And as life in the near future turns perilous, the pledge she made to a stranger may become the key to her family''s survival . . .In 1984, teenager Holly Sykes runs away from home - a Gravesend pub. Sixty years later, she is to be found in the far west of Ireland, raising a granddaughter as the world''s climate collapses.In between, Holly is encountered as a barmaid in a Swiss resort by an undergraduate sociopath in 1991; has a child with a foreign correspondent covering the Iraq War in 2003; and, widowed, becomes the confidante of a self-obsessed author of fading powers and reputation during the present decade. Yet these changing personae are only part of the story, as Holly''s life is repeatedly intersected by a slow-motion war between a cult of predatory soul-decanters and a band of vigilantes led by one Doctor Marinus. Holly begins as an unwitting pawn in this war - but may prove to be its decisive weapon.The arc of a life, a social seismograph, a fantasy of shadows and an inquiry into aging, mortality and survival, THE BONE CLOCKS could only have been written by David Mitchell.

David Mitchell ha sido reconocido durante mucho tiempo como una de las mejores - si no la mejor - mentes literarias de su generación; pero también es uno de los mejores creadores de suspense. El libro perfecto para leer en una noche oscura y tormentosa....