David Stephen Mitchell is an English novelist.
He has written six novels, two of which, number9dream
and Cloud Atlas, were shortlisted for the
Booker Prize. He has lived in Italy, Japan
and Ireland.
Early life
Mitchell was born in Southport in Merseyside,
England, and raised in Malvern, Worcestershire.
He was educated at Hanley Castle High School
and at the University of Kent, where he obtained
a degree in English and American Literature
followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature.
Mitchell lived in Sicily for a year, then
moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught
English to technical students for eight years,
before returning to England, where he could
live on his earnings as a writer and support
his pregnant wife.
Work
Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten, 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
and was shortlisted for the Guardian First
Book Award. His two subsequent novels, number9dream
and Cloud Atlas, 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.
In 2012 his novel Cloud Atlas was made into
a film. In recent years he has also written
opera libretti. Wake, based on the 2000 Enschede
fireworks disaster and with music by Klaas
de Vries, was performed by the Dutch Nationale
Reisopera in 2010. He has also finished another
opera, Sunken Garden, with the Dutch composer
Michel van der Aa, to be premiered in 2013
by the English National Opera.
Mitchell's sixth novel, The Bone Clocks, was
published on September 2, 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
opera Sunken Garden works as a prologue to
Mitchell's forthcoming book, which will be
finished in the second half of 2013. It will
take place in the years between 1984 and 2057.
The Bone Clocks was longlisted for the 2014
Man Booker Prize.
Personal life
After another stint in Japan, Mitchell currently
lives with his wife Keiko Yoshida and their
two children in Ardfield, Clonakilty in County
Cork, Ireland. 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 the speech disorder of stammering
and considers the film The King's Speech to
be one of the most accurate portrayals of
what it's like to be a stammerer: "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 also a patron of
the British Stammering Association.
One of Mitchell's children has autism, and
in 2013 he and wife Keiko translated into
English a book written by a 13-year-old Japanese
boy with autism, The Reason I Jump: One Boy's
Voice from the Silence of Autism.
List of works
Novels
Ghostwritten
number9dream
Cloud Atlas
Black Swan Green
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
The Bone Clocks
Short stories
"What You Do Not Know You Want", McSweeney's
Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories,
Vintage Books, 2004
"Judith Castle", The New York Times, January
2008
"The Massive Rat", The Guardian, August 2009
"Character Development", The Guardian, September
2009
"Muggins Here", The Guardian, August 2010
"Earth calling Taylor", "Financial Times",
December 2010
"Variations on a Theme by Mister Donut", Granta
127: Japan, Spring 2014.
"January Man" Granta81
"The Right Sort", Twitter, 2014
Other
"The Gardener", Story accompanying the exhibition
"The Flower Show", June 2011
The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the
Silence of Autism
References
^ "My wife and I moved to the UK in 2002 because
it dawned on us, midway through her second
trimester, that back in England I could support
the soon-to-be three of us from my earnings
as a writer alone. If we had stayed in Japan,
on the other hand, where the cost of living
was higher, I would have had to stick with
the day job in order to bring home enough
yen, and I would have been unable to help
with the imminent arrival any more than an
average Japanese husband—that is, not a
lot." http:www.theparisreview.org6034/the-art-of-fiction-no-204-david-mitchell
^ Gibbons, Fiachra. "Readers pick top Guardian
books". The Guardian. 
^ "Man Booker Prize Archive". 
^ Mitchell, D.. "Best of Young British Novelists
2003: The January Man". Granta. 
^ "The Time 100". Time. 2007-05-03. Retrieved
2010-05-01. 
^ "Hollywood brings novel to life in $100m
movie". Malvern Gazette. 13 August 2012. Retrieved
3 September 2012 One segment of "Ghostwritten"
was made into a BAFTA nominated short film
in 2011 starring Martin Freeman, titled "The
Voorman Problem".. 
^ David Mitchell. "Article by Mitchell describing
how he became involved in ''Wake''". London:
Guardian. Retrieved 2013-08-28. 
^ "Details of ''Sunken Garden'' from Van der
Aa's official website". Vanderaa.net. 2013-06-09.
Retrieved 2013-08-28. 
^ "David Mitchell" Dialogue Talk.
^ "New David Mitchell novel out next autumn".
The Bookseller. 2013-11-26. Retrieved 2013-11-28. 
^ "Interview with a writer: David Mitchell".
The Spectator. 2013-01-25. Retrieved 2013-01-27. 
^ "Interview David Mitchell". Goedekleedjes.nl.
Retrieved 2013-08-28. 
^ "Bold Type: Essay by David Mitchell". Randomhouse.com.
Retrieved 2013-08-28. 
^ a b c "Lost for words", David Mitchell,
Prospect magazine, 23 February 2011, Issue
#180
^ "Black Swan Green revisited". Speaking Out.
Spring 2011. Retrieved 30 June 2011. 
^ Tisdale, Sallie. "Voice of the Voiceless".
The New York imes. Retrieved 1 September 2013. 
Further reading
"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.. David Mitchell: Critical Essays.
Kent: Gylphi, 2011.
External links
David Mitchell's official website
David Mitchell's profile at the official Man
Booker Prize site
Adam Begley. "David Mitchell, The Art of Fiction
No. 204". Paris Review. 
Linklater, A.. "The author who was forced
to learn wordplay". The Guardian. Retrieved
2007-09-23. 
David Mitchell - How I Write, Untitled Books,
May 2010
"Get Writing: Playing With Structure" by David
Mitchell at BBC.co
"Character Development" by David Mitchell,
a short story from The Guardian
"David Mitchell, the Experimentalist", New
York Times Magazine, June 2010
"The Floating Library: What can't the novelist
David Mitchell do?", The New Yorker, 5 July
2010
"David Mitchell: The philosophy of stories
and The Wire", 3news.co.nz, 12 August 2011
