David Mitchell | |
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Born | David Stephen Mitchell 12 January 1969 Southport, England |
Occupation | Novelist, television writer, screenwriter |
Education | University of Kent |
Period | 1999–present |
Notable works | number9dream Cloud Atlas |
Notable awards | John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 1999 Ghostwritten |
Spouse | Keiko Yoshida |
Children | 2 |
Website | |
www |
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 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. [1]
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]
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. 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]
Mitchell was the second author to contribute to the Future Library project. He delivered his book From Me Flows What You Call Time on 28 May 2016. [13] [14]
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]
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. [17] Mitchell had signed a contract to write season three of the series, but Netflix cancelled the show. [18]
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 . [19]
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. [20] In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote: [21]
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. [22] He believes that the film The King's Speech (2010) is one of the most accurate portrayals of that experience for an individual. [22] 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." [22] Mitchell is a patron of the British Stammering Association. [23]
Mitchell's son is autistic. In 2013, Mitchell and his wife Yoshida translated a book into English that was written by Naoki Higashida, a 13-year-old Japanese autistic boy, titled The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism . [24] Higashida is said to have learned to communicate using the techniques of facilitated communication and rapid prompting method. [ citation needed ]}
In 2017, Mitchell and his wife translated a second book attributed to Higashida, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8: A Young Man's Voice from the Silence of Autism . [25]
Novels
Novellas
Short stories
Opera librettos
Selected articles
Other
Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski are American film and television directors, writers and producers. The sisters are both trans women.
The Matrix Revolutions is a 2003 American science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the third installment in The Matrix film series, released six months following The Matrix Reloaded. The film stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Jada Pinkett Smith, Monica Bellucci, Lambert Wilson, and Mary Alice who replaces Gloria Foster as the Oracle following Foster's death in 2001.
Tom Tykwer is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thriller films Run Lola Run (1998), Heaven (2002), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), and The International (2009). He collaborated with The Wachowskis as co-director for the science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012) and the Netflix series Sense8 (2015–2018), and worked on the score for Lana Wachowski's The Matrix Resurrections (2021). Tykwer is also well known as the co-creator of the internationally acclaimed German television series Babylon Berlin (2017–).
Cloud Atlas, published in 2004, is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. The book combines metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction, with interconnected nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawai'i in a distant post-apocalyptic future. Its title references a piece of music by Toshi Ichiyanagi.
Aleksandar Hemon is a Bosnian-American author, essayist, critic, television writer, and screenwriter. He is best known for the novels Nowhere Man (2002) and The Lazarus Project (2008), and his scriptwriting as a co-writer of The Matrix Resurrections (2021).
Black Swan Green is a semi-autobiographical novel written by David Mitchell, published in April 2006 in the U.S. and May 2006 in the UK. The bildungsroman's thirteen chapters each represent one month—from January 1982 through January 1983—in the life of 13-year-old Worcestershire boy Jason Taylor. The novel is written from the perspective of Taylor and employs many teen colloquialisms and popular-culture references from early-1980s England.
Bae Doona, is a South Korean actress and photographer. She became known outside Korea for her roles as a political activist in Park Chan-wook's Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), archer Park Nam-joo in Bong Joon-ho's The Host (2006), and as the doll in Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll (2009). She has had English-speaking roles in the Wachowski films Cloud Atlas (2012) and Jupiter Ascending (2015), as well as their Netflix television series Sense8 (2015–2018). In Korean-speaking roles, she is well known as the leading female character in the Netflix period zombie thriller, Kingdom (2019–present), the crime thriller Stranger (2017-2020), and the sci-fi limited series The Silent Sea.
Aml Eysan Ameen is a British actor and filmmaker. He is best known for his roles as Trevor (Trife) in Kidulthood (2006), Malcolm Davies in Harry's Law, Lewis Hardy in the ITV television series The Bill, Capheus in the first season of the Netflix original series Sense8, and Alby in The Maze Runner (2014).
Cloud Atlas is a 2012 epic science fiction film written and directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer. Based on the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, it has multiple plots occurring during six eras in time. Cast members perform multiple roles in these time periods.
Jamie Clayton is an American actress and model. Clayton is best known for starring as Nomi Marks in the Netflix original series Sense8, Sasha Booker in the third season of Designated Survivor and Tess Van De Berg in Showtime's The L Word: Generation Q. She portrays Pinhead in the 2022 Hellraiser film.
Valerie Miles is a publisher, writer, translator and the co–founder of Granta en español. She is known for promoting Spanish and Latin American literature and their translation in the English speaking world, at the same time as bringing American and British authors to Spain and Latin America for the first time, working with main publishing houses on the sector. She is currently the co-director of Granta en español and The New York Review of Books in its Spanish translation. On 2012 she co-curated a Roberto Bolaño exhibit at the Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona. In addition, she is a professor in the post-graduate program for literary translation at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
Sense8 is an American science fiction drama television series created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski for Netflix. The production companies behind Sense8 included the Wachowskis' Anarchos Productions, Straczynski's Studio JMS, and Georgeville Television, with Unpronounceable Productions having been set up specifically for the show.
The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice from the Silence of Autism is a biography attributed to Naoki Higashida, a nonverbal autistic person from Japan. It was first published in Japan in 2007. The English translation, by Keiko Yoshida and her husband, English author David Mitchell, was published in 2013.
Michael Fitzpatrick is a libertarian, British general practitioner (GP) and author from London, United Kingdom. He was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Fitzpatrick is known for writing several books and newspaper articles about controversies in autism, from his perspective as someone who is both a GP and the parent of a son with autism. His book Defeating Autism: A Dangerous Delusion (2008) describes his views on the rising popularity of "biomedical" treatments for autism, as well as the MMR vaccine controversy.
The first season of Sense8, an American science fiction drama television series created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski, follows eight strangers from different parts of the world who suddenly discover that they are "sensates"; human beings who are mentally and emotionally linked. The season was produced for Netflix by the Wachowskis' Anarchos Productions and Straczynski's Studio JMS, along with Javelin Productions and Georgeville Television. Unpronounceable Productions was set up to oversee production for the show.
The second season of Sense8, an American science fiction drama television series created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski, follows eight strangers from different parts of the world who suddenly become "sensates"; human beings who are mentally and emotionally linked. The season was produced for Netflix by Lana Wachowski and her wife's Venus Castina Productions and Straczynski's Studio JMS, along with Georgeville Television and Elizabeth Bay Productions. Unpronounceable Productions was set up to oversee production for the show since the first season.
The following is a list of unproduced projects from The Wachowskis in roughly chronological order. During their long careers, The Wachowskis have worked on a number of projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under their direction. Some of these projects fell in development hell and are presumably or officially canceled.
Sense8 is an American science fiction drama web television series created by Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski for Netflix. The production companies behind Sense8 include the Wachowskis' Anarchos Productions, Straczynski's Studio JMS, and Georgeville Television, with Unpronounceable Productions having been set up specifically for this show.
Utopia Avenue is a 2020 novel by David Mitchell. It is his eighth published novel, and his first since Slade House (2015). It was published by Sceptre on 14 July 2020. The novel tells the story of the fictional 1960s British psychedelic rock band Utopia Avenue.
The Matrix Resurrections (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) is a 2021 soundtrack album from the film, The Matrix Resurrections. WaterTower released the album on December 22, 2021.