David Mitchell (author)

Career

Prose

Mitchell's entire body of fictional works feature multiple recurring characters and themes that together form an interconnected fictional world, which Mitchell refers to as his 'macronovel'.

His first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), takes place in locations ranging from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both favourably received and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, joining such writers as Adam Thirlwell, Andrew O'Hagan, Philip Hensher, A. L. Kennedy and Zadie Smith.

Mitchell's sixth novel, The Bone Clocks, was published in 2014. In an interview in The Spectator, Mitchell said that the novel has "dollops of the fantastic in it", and is about "stuff between life and death". The Bone Clocks was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and won the World Fantasy Award.

Mitchell was the second author to contribute to the Future Library project. He delivered his book From Me Flows What You Call Time on 28 May 2016.

Utopia Avenue, Mitchell's ninth novel, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Utopia Avenue tells the "unexpurgated story" of a British band of the same name, who emerged from London's psychedelic scene in 1967 and was "fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet and blues bassist Dean Moss". Jonathan Dee, reviewing for The New Yorker, felt the novel's "authenticity" was diminished by Mitchell's musical descriptions and undermined by unrealistic dialogue from the cameo characters. Ben Yagoda wrote about a number of cases where American characters implausibly use expressions found only in British English.

Other work

In 2012, his metafictional novel Cloud Atlas (again, with multiple narrators), was adapted as a feature film of the same name.

Following the release of the 2012 film adaptation of Cloud Atlas, Mitchell began work as a screenwriter with Lana Wachowski (one of Cloud Atlas' three directors). In 2015, Mitchell contributed plotting and scripted scenes for the second season of the Netflix series Sense8 by the Wachowskis, writing the series finale together with Aleksandar Hemon. Mitchell had signed a contract to write season three of the series, but Netflix cancelled the show.

One segment of number9dream was adapted as a short film titled The Voorman Problem and starring Martin Freeman. It was nominated for a BAFTA in 2013.

In August 2019, it was announced that Mitchell would continue his collaboration with Lana Wachowski and Hemon to write the screenplay for The Matrix Resurrections.

In addition to his fiction, Mitchell has written opera libretti in recent years. Wake, with music by Klaas de Vries, was based on the 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster. It was performed by the Dutch Nationale Reisopera in 2010. He created the opera, Sunken Garden, with Dutch composer Michel van der Aa; it was premiered in 2013 by the English National Opera.

Several of Mitchell's book covers were created by design duo Kai and Sunny. Mitchell has also collaborated with the duo, by contributing two short stories to their art exhibits in 2011 and 2014.

Personal life

After another stint in Japan, Mitchell and his wife, Keiko Yoshida, live in Ardfield, County Cork, Ireland, as of 2018. They have two children. In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote:

I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last six years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself.

Mitchell has a stammer. He believes that the film The King's Speech (2010) is one of the most accurate portrayals of that experience for an individual. He said, "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13-year-old." Mitchell is a patron of the British Stammering Association.

Mitchell's and Yoshida's son is severely autistic. Mitchell says that to be the parent of a child with autism, "you have to become a stronger, kinder, more compassionate, more patient, tougher, clear-sighted person", and it is accompanied by a gift, "real enlightenment about the human condition and the human heart". In 2013, they translated a book into English that was written by Naoki Higashida, a 13-year-old Japanese autistic boy, titled The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism. Mitchell called the book "a revelatory godsend", providing both practical advice and leading him to think of their son having greater agency than he had previously thought, which helped their son. Initially, his wife translated parts of the book out loud for him at the kitchen table, and then they translated the book informally to give to their son's teachers and care-givers; however, Mitchell's agent and editor thought it might have a wider audience, leading to a formal translation.

In 2017, Mitchell and his wife translated a second book by Higashida, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism.