David Mitchell (author)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the English novelist. For the English actor and comedian see David Mitchell

David Mitchell in Warsaw, Poland April 7, 2006

David Mitchell (born January, 1969) is an English novelist. He has written four novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The latest, Black Swan Green, has been longlisted for the 2006 award.

Mitchell was born in Southport, Merseyside, in England and educated at the University of Kent, studying for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an MA 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. He currently lives in Cork, Ireland with his Japanese wife, Keiko, and their two children.

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.

Mitchell's American editor at Random House is novelist David Ebershoff.

[edit] Future Work

Mitchell's next book will be an historical novel about Dejima, the man-made island in the middle of Nagasaki Harbour that was built to house Dutch traders in the 17th century. Having just finished five months of research in the Netherlands, Mitchell says that the biggest challenge will be what to omit from this complex story. "For over two centuries", he said, "the Dutch were the only white people allowed to see inside Japan". No one was allowed on or off the island except for tradesmen, translators and prostitutes. "Except", he said, "every four years when the head of the trading post made the trek to Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to pay his respects to the Shogun". Mitchell plans to contrast Shogunate Japan with the Napoleonic era in Europe, he said. Of particular interest is the fact that while the Netherlands ceased to exist for a while after Napoleon annexed it, the Dutch flag still flew in Dejima. According to a recent interview, the book will consist of 6 novellas of 18 chapters each with 9 told by one narrator (gaijin - foreigner) and the alternate 9 by another (Japanese).