Cloud Atlas

Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies . . . A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific Ocean in 1850. A disinherited composer conning his way into the home of a dying genius in interwar Belgium.A high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California. A vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors. The testament of 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 along the corridor of history - echoes that change destinies in ways great and small. In a globe-encircling narrative reaching from the nineteenth century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity's will to power, and where it will lead us. *Please note that p. 40 is intentionally blank*