The author of Cloud Atlas is David Mitchell.
I first became aware of Mitchell in a YouTube interiew/conversation at this link.
Book Structure
During the interview Mitchell described whis writing style in the video excerpt below.
In the video Mitchell states that his natural style is as a novella writer. He assembles a group of novellas connected together by "footbridges and worm holes" so it looks like that he has "handed in a Sir Christopher Wren sized thing but it is actually just leggo blocks".
Cloud Atlas is written in this style. It consists of six nested stories (of novella length); each is read or observed by a main character of the next story, thus they progress in time through the central sixth story. The first five stories are each interrupted at a pivotal moment. After the sixth story, the others are resolved in reverse chronological order.
The diagram below graphically displays the structure of the novel. Source: https://albrooke.com/2016/01/19/cloud-atlas/
In the second story Robert Frobisher the musician is writing a musical composition - Cloud Atlas Sextet. His description of the structure of the piece is reminiscent of the structure of the book. His comment "Revolutionary of gimmicky" is maybe the author asking the same question about the book. “Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late.”
Here is the music from the film adaption. It is not like the description in the book but is still very pleasant to listen tol
Major Themes
Reincarnation of souls is an important theme in the book. Zachry, the protagonist in the sixth story, makes it an explicit claim and even uses the name of the book in his argument.
“Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.”
Mitchell does guard the secular hypothesis when he has Meronym reply that she does not believe in souls.
Each of the main characters has a comet birth mark and Mitchell does think that this signifies reincarnation. Unfortunately two of the characters with this birth mark Luise Rey and Timothy Cavenish have overlapping lives. When asked about this Mitchell admits that it was a mistake but goes on to give a "rationalisation" which includes that "...things are more interesting when they are fuzzy and don't quite fit ..." which can work in a novel and goes on to describe such probolems using the wonderful phrase "portable textual temples of inexactitude" and "its kind of OK for novels to not make complete sense, this is ofcause a ratioisation but its kind of a true rationalisation as well."
See his full response to the issue in the video below:
Dystopia
Each of the main characters in the stories were trying to improve their world.
Adam Ewing decides to join the anti-slavery movement.
Robert Frobisher composes a musical masteriece.
Luisa Rey stops the construction of a dangeroug nuclear power station.
Timothy Cavendish writes a film script of his comic adventures. The film is produced as it is watched by Somni-451 in the next story.
Sonmi-451 publishes her declarations which are revered in by later generations.
Zachry assists Meronym and resists the temptation to attack her.
But the attempts by individuals to improve the workd are ineffective as the two stories in the future are very dystopic.
In An Orison of Sonmi~451 set in the year 2144, in a country called Nea So Copros: " ... a savage consumer-driven society gone amok. Each citizen has a spending quota; all-seeing eyes watch from the street corners; and each citizen has a "soul" or a computer chip implanted in his finger, without which travel and other basic freedoms are impossible. Several stratas of society exist, ranging from Xecutives (who appear to run Nea So Copros as part of the "Juche") to Fabricants, mass-produced slave clones treated as nothing more than property." Source of quote at this link
Somni described Nea So Copros as follows: "Nea So Copros is poisoning itself to death. Its soil is polluted, its rivers lifeless,its air tosloaded, its food supplies riddled with rogue genes. the downstrata can't buy the drugs necessary to couonter these privations. Melanoma and maleria belts advance northwards at forty kilometers per year." People escape the surrounding coutryside around NeoSeoul because of: ".. malaria, flooding, drought, rogue crop-genomes, parasites, encroaching deadlands...".
“I believe there is another world waiting for us. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there.” "Human hunger birthed the Civ’lize, but human hunger killed it too." —Meronym
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