David Stephen Mitchell (born 12 January 1969) is an English novelist, television writer, and screenwriter.
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 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.[1]
Work
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.[2] His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both favorably received and shortlisted for the
Man Booker Prize.[3]
In 2003, he was selected as one of
Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.[4] In 2007, Mitchell was listed among
Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.[5]
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. [6]
In addition to novels, 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.[7] He created the opera, Sunken Garden, with Dutch composer
Michel van der Aa; it was premiered in 2013 by the
English National Opera.[8]
Several of Mitchell's book covers were created by design duo Kai and Sunny.[9] Mitchell has also collaborated with the duo, by contributing two short stories to their art exhibits in 2011 and 2014.
Mitchell's sixth novel, The Bone Clocks, was published in 2014.[10] 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".[11]The Bone Clocks was longlisted for the
2014 Man Booker Prize.[12]
Utopia Avenue, Mitchell's ninth novel, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2020, during the first year of the
Covid 19 pandemic.[15]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".[16]
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'.[17]
Other works
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. They had adapted the novel for a TV series, and together with
Aleksandar Hemon, they wrote the series finale.[18] Mitchell had signed a contract to write season three of the series, but Netflix cancelled the show.[19]
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.[20]
Personal life
After another stint in Japan, Mitchell and his wife, Keiko Yoshida, live in
Ardfield, County Cork, Ireland, as of 2018[update]. They have two children.[21] In an essay for
Random House, Mitchell wrote:[22]
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.[23] He believes that the film The King's Speech (2010) is one of the most accurate portrayals of that experience for an individual.[23] 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."[23] Mitchell is a patron of the
British Stammering Association.[24]
"The world begins its turn with you, or how David Mitchell's novels think". In B. Schoene. The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
Dillon, S. (ed.). David Mitchell: Critical Essays. Kent: Gylphi, 2011.