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About the author
David Mitchell is the author of the novels Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Bone Clocks, Slade House and Utopia Avenue. He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, won the World Fantasy Award, and the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes, among others. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work. His screenwriting credits include the TV shows Pachinko and Sense8, and the movie Matrix: Resurrections.
In addition, David Mitchell together with KA Yoshida has translated from Japanese two autism memoirs by Naoki Higashida: The Reason I Jump and Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight.
He lives in Ireland.
Summary
The spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS, 'one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' (Independent).
'The great rock and roll novel - an epic love letter to the greatest music ever made and the book the music has always deserved' Tony Parsons
This audio CD edition is 25 hours 11 minutes, and read by Andrew Wincott.
Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of.
Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on.
This is the story of Utopia Avenue's brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker - a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief; of stardom's wobbly ladder and fame's Faustian pact; and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.
Above all, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.
Praise for David Mitchell's previous work:
'Open up his head and a whole magical, ecstatic symphony of inventiveness and ideals will fly out.' The Times
'Mitchell's imagination is boundless and absolutely thorough, and he is also very funny.' Sunday Telegraph
'An author of extraordinary ambition and skill.' Independent on Sunday
'A storyteller of genius . . . a man who may yet prove to be the greatest writer of his age.' Mail on Sunday
'Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good' Daily Mail
'Our most accomplished inventor of multitudinous worlds, which are filled with complex, vital people.' Financial Times
Additional text
Utterly groovy . . . wonderful . . . A beautifully rendered four-part harmony
