David Mitchell

Author profile

born

January 12, 1969 in Southport, Merseyside, England, The United Kingdom

gender

male

website

http://www.thousandautumns.com/

genre

Literature & Fiction

influences

John Banville, Muriel Spark, Haruki Murakami, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo...more

About this author

edit data

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

David Mitchell was born in Southport, Merseyside, in England, raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, and educated at the University of Kent, studying for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.

He lived for a year in Sicily, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England. After another stint in Japan, he currently lives in Ireland with his wife Keiko and their 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 li...more Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

David Mitchell was born in Southport, Merseyside, in England, raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, and educated at the University of Kent, studying for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.

He lived for a year in Sicily, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England. After another stint in Japan, he currently lives in Ireland with his wife Keiko and their 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 6 years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself."

Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. The novel 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 shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

Mitchell's American editor at Random House is novelist David Ebershoff. He lists John Banville, Muriel Spark, Haruki Murakami, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Russell Hoban, Italo Calvino, Peter Carey, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Wright, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Ursula K. Le Guin among his many literary influences.(less)

combine editions
Books by David Mitchell

Average rating: 4.05 · 54,287 ratings · 8,444 reviews · 10 distinct works

	Cloud Atlas 4.18 avg rating — 23,860 ratings — published 2004 — 47 editions	My rating:
	The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet 4.00 avg rating — 11,324 ratings — published 2010 — 33 editions	My rating:
	Black Swan Green 3.95 avg rating — 8,473 ratings — published 2006 — 33 editions	My rating:
	Ghostwritten 4.03 avg rating — 5,061 ratings — published 1999 — 16 editions	My rating:
	number9dream 3.89 avg rating — 4,154 ratings — published 2001 — 18 editions	My rating:
	The Gardener 3.00 avg rating — 1 rating	My rating:
	Women On The Warpath The story of the women of the first world war 2.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1965 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Building with Butterflies 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	My rating:
	Origami Alfresco 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	My rating:
	Communication Theory Today by David Mitchell, David Crowley (Editor) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 3 editions	My rating:

More books by David Mitchell…

Upcoming Events

No scheduled events. Add an event.

Interviews

July 2010, David Mitchell
"Historical fiction isn't easy; it's not just another genre. How are they going to speak? If you get that too right, it sounds like a pastiche comedy—people are saying "thou" and "prithee" and "gadzooks," which they did say, but to an early 21st-century audience, it's laughable, even though it's accurate." ...More

more interviews »

Quotes by David Mitchell

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

tags: books , love , reading

204 people liked it

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

107 people liked it

“If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.”
― David Mitchell, Black Swan Green

tags: literary-criticism , writing

90 people liked it

See all David Mitchell's quotes »

Polls

Książka marca

Ogniem i mieczem / Henryk Sienkiewicz

1 vote 100.0%

W ogóle i w szczególe. Eseje poufałe / Anne Fadiman

0 votes 0.0%

Kraj z księżyca. Podróże do serca Polski / Michael Moran

0 votes 0.0%

Mistrz i Małgorzata / Mikhail Bulgakov

0 votes 0.0%

Atlas chmur / David Mitchell

0 votes 0.0%

1 total vote

comments and details

More...

Topics Mentioning This Author

topics	posts	views	last activity
SciFi and Fantasy...: July Sci-Fi Book Please See Posts#1-#14-#26	73	248	Jun 14, 2009 03:22am
50 Books' Book Club: August's Book	20	90	Aug 08, 2009 09:54am
Listomania: David Mitchell's Top Ten	1	98	Aug 14, 2009 09:32am
The Next Best Boo...: please recommend connected stories, novel in stories	49	319	Oct 27, 2009 09:21pm
The Next Best Boo...: End of the Year Summary	81	236	Dec 29, 2009 05:48pm
Constant Reader: Best Books READ in 2009	199	280	Jan 16, 2010 08:39am
Cover to Cover Ch...: 144 Questionnaire (just for fun)	62	267	Feb 03, 2010 02:39pm
50 Books' Book Club: List of past group reads	2	37	Feb 06, 2010 03:57pm

More…

Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite David to Goodreads.

David's Fans (1179)

David Mitchell

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by David Mitchell

Upcoming Events

Interviews

Quotes by David Mitchell

Polls

Topics Mentioning This Author

combine editions
Books by David Mitchell