SPECCY SETS WRITER ON ROAD TO PAPERBACKS AND PLAUDITS
Okay, so we admit this isn't exactly 'news'. We did in fact yank an article out of a copy of Big Issue In The North over a year ago but have only just got around to writing it up.
Queue lots of mumbled excuses about being busy at work and moving house.
Anyhow, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta magazine's Best of Young British Novelists for 2003. After debuting with Ghostwriting in 1999, the Booker-nominated Number9dream followed in 2001.
Then came Cloud Atlas, which prompted the article in the Big Issue sometime in 2004.
The novel, which attracted enthusiastic reviews from several national newspapers, is the type of book that's hard to describe. Basically, it contains six very diverse narrative strands, set in different times and places, which cleverly leak and link into each other.
One review describes the book as "structured rather akin to a Chinese puzzle" but judging by the customer reviews on Amazon.co.uk, it is a pretty remarkable book and an enjoyable read.
So where's the connection to the Sinclair Spectrum then, I hear you asking with barely disguised impatience.
Well, in the interview
piece with The
Big Issue, he talks about his formative years. On the subject of the complicated
narratives he favours in his fictional work, Mitchell told the magazine: "It's
just part of my mental make-up. I remember when I was a kid, I'd get these
big sheets of cartridge paper and draw huge maps, like at the end of The
Return Of The King.
// next //
Read David Mitchell's Books
