David Mitchell

David Mitchell (born in Southport, England, in 1969) is a British novelist writing in English whose work moves easily between literary fiction, science fiction and fantasy. He matters for having built an interconnected fictional world, which he calls his "macronovel", in which characters and themes recur from book to book.

He studied English and American Literature at the University of Kent and then took an MA in Comparative Literature. After a year in Sicily he moved to Hiroshima, where he taught English to technical college students for eight years. That Japanese period left a mark on his writing and on his family life, since his wife is Japanese. He now lives in County Cork, Ireland.

His first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves from Okinawa to Mongolia to New York on the eve of the millennium, told by nine narrators whose stories interlock. number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004) followed, both shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Cloud Atlas, built from nested stories, became a film in 2012. With Black Swan Green (2006) he turned to a more personal register, following a year in the life of a stammering thirteen-year-old in Thatcher's England. The Bone Clocks (2014), which won the World Fantasy Award, widened his world toward the fantastic.

His influence extends beyond the novel. He has written screenplays with Lana Wachowski, opera libretti, and translations from Japanese, including Naoki Higashida's book about autism. His work is often cited as an example of fiction that mixes genres without giving up literary craft.