Ayrs asks Frobisher to write a song inspired by a dream of a "nightmarish cafe", deep underground, wherein "the waitresses all had the same face" and ate soap. Frobisher sells rare books from Ayrs' collection to a fence, but is intrigued by reading the first half of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, and asks Sixsmith if he can obtain the second half so Frobisher can learn how the story ends. Frobisher and Ayrs' wife Jocasta become lovers, but her daughter Eva remains suspicious of him. Frobisher takes pride in this and begins composing his own music again. It is performed nightly in Kraków, and Ayrs is much praised. Soon, Frobisher produces Der Todtenvogel ("The Death Bird") from a basic melody that Ayrs gives him. It is told in the form of letters from Robert Frobisher, a recently disowned and penniless bisexual young English musician, to his lover Rufus Sixsmith, after Frobisher journeys to Zedelghem to become an amanuensis to the reclusive once-great composer Vyvyan Ayrs, who is dying of syphilis and nearly blind. The next story is set in Zedelghem, near Bruges, Belgium, in 1931. When Ewing discloses this to the Captain, Autua proves himself a first-class seaman, and the Captain puts Autua to work for his passage to Hawaii. Meanwhile, Autua has stowed away in Ewing's cabin. The doctor diagnoses Ewing with fatal parasite infection and recommends a course of treatment. ![]() Goose, Ewing's only friend aboard the ship, examines the injuries sustained on the volcano, and Ewing also mentions his chronic ailment. Reasoning that those who carved the faces must have had egress from the crater, he escapes. Later, Ewing ascends a high hill called Conical Tor and stumbles into its crater, where he finds himself surrounded by faces carved into trees. During the punishment, the victim, Autua, sees pity in Ewing's eyes and smiles. He witnesses a Moriori slave being flogged by a Maori overseer. The first story begins in the Chatham Islands in the mid-nineteenth century, where Adam Ewing, a guileless American lawyer from San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, awaits repairs to his ship. The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (Part 1) ![]() Each section's protagonist reads or observes the chronologically earlier work in the chain. After the sixth story, the others are resolved in reverse chronological order. The first five stories are each interrupted at a pivotal moment. The book consists of six nested stories each is read or observed by a main character of the next, progressing in time through the central sixth story. 1.11 The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (Part 2).1.9 Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (Part 2).1.8 The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (Part 2).1.6 Sloosha's Crossin' an' Evrythin' After.1.4 The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish (Part 1).1.3 Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery (Part 1).1.1 The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing (Part 1).It is not a direct reference to a cloud atlas. The author has said that the book is about reincarnation and the universality of human nature, and that the title references a changing landscape (a "cloud") over manifestations of fixed human nature (the "atlas"). Its title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. 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. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and featuring an ensemble cast, was released in 2012. Unusually, it received awards from both the general literary community and the speculative fiction community. ![]() It was short-listed for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and Arthur C. Published in 2004, it won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction award and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award. Cloud Atlas is the third novel by British author David Mitchell.
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