David Mitchell

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".

David Stephen Mitchell (born 12 January 1969) is an English novelist, television writer, and screenwriter.

"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's 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.

Wake, with music by Klaas de Vries, was based on the 2000 Enschede fireworks disaster.

He has written nine novels, two of which, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

He has also written articles for several newspapers, most notably for The Guardian.

He has translated books about autism from Japanese to English.

Mitchell was born in Southport in Lancashire (now Merseyside), England, and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire.

He was educated at Hanley Castle High School.

At the University of Kent, he earned a degree in English and American Literature, followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.

Mitchell lived in Sicily for a year.

He moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England.

There he could live on his earnings as a writer and support his pregnant wife.

His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both favorably received and 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.

It was performed by the Dutch Nationale Reisopera in 2010.

Mitchell has also collaborated with the duo, by contributing two short stories to their art exhibits in 2011 and 2014.

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

One segment of number9dream was adapted as a short film titled The Voorman Problem and starring Martin Freeman.

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).

It was nominated for a BAFTA in 2013.

In addition to novels, Mitchell has written opera libretti in recent years.

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'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.

Mitchell was the second author to contribute to the Future Library project.

In 2015, Mitchell contributed plotting and scripted scenes for the second season of the Netflix series Sense8 by The Wachowskis.

They had adapted the novel for a TV series, and together with Aleksandar Hemon, they wrote the series finale.

Mitchell had signed a contract to write season three of the series, but Netflix cancelled the show.

He delivered his book From Me Flows What You Call Time on 28 May 2016.

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.

After another stint in Japan, Mitchell and his wife, Keiko Yoshida, live in Ardfield, County Cork, Ireland,.

They have two children.

In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote:

Utopia Avenue, Mitchell's ninth novel, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2020, during the first year of the Covid 19 pandemic.