Cloud Atlas is a sextet performed by one virtuoso –author David Mitchell. Five sections of the sextet are enacted in two parts which frame a sixth central episode.

The novel begins and ends with The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing,  a diary written by a mid-nineteenth century traveller who relates his adventures on a Pacific Island. The Letters from Zedelgham are the correspondence between a composer, Frobisher, and his friend/lover Sixsmith, starting in 1931. Half Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, has journalist Luisa Rey sniffing out a story of corporate corruption in Jimmy Carter’s America. The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish is the comic story of a vanity publisher who lucks into a fortune when a crim’s biography becomes hot property. The Orison of Somni 451 is an interview set in a future dystopia. Each of these stories leads up to, and away from the central, post-apocalytic piece entitled Sloosha’s Crossin’ an’ Everythin’ After.

Mitchell is convincing in each of the genres, modulating tone perfectly, developing characters anchored in their time and bridging between sections ingeniously. It’s all held together by consideration of the question - will science devise “ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation?” (p 462).

It’s fabulous.