The Bone Clocks

Metaphysical thriller, meditation on mortality and chronicle of our self-devouring times, this is the kaleidoscopic new novel from the author of Cloud Atlas.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014

One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'. Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking . . .

THE BONE CLOCKS follows the twists and turns of Holly's life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast as Europe's oil supply dries up - a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes - daughter, sister, mother, guardian - is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

Long-listed for Man Booker Prize 2014 (UK)
Long-listed for Folio Prize 2015 (UK)

“Mitchell's mesmerizing saga is evidence of the power of story to transport us, and even to stop time entirely.”

A globe-trotting, mind-bending, hair-raising triumph - Guardian

He is funny, hip and full of life. Which other writer could match his witty elision of fiction and science, of sense and nonsense? This beautiful explosion of adventurous ideas may well take him, finally, beyond the Booker shortlist. - The Times

If only real life were as elegant and generally encouraging as a Mitchell novel! He writes with scintillating verve and abundance. - Daily Telegraph

For its experimentation, humour, hybrid energy, and sheer narrative pleasure, The Bone Clocks compels admiration. - Evening Standard

No one, clearly, has ever told Mitchell that the novel is dead. He writes with a furious intensity and slapped-awake vitality, with a delight in language and all the rabbit holes of experience - New York Times Book Review

Mitchell's vision of the future may be bleak, but the force of his storytelling made The Bone Clocks a joy - Time Australia, Number Two in Best Fiction of 2014

A globe-trotting kaleidoscope that covers both ancient and new ground, The Bone Clocks is fiction at its most spellbinding - MiNDFOOD

David Mitchell is one of the most acclaimed authors of his generation - 'Just about the most audacious, thrilling and, above all, entertaining young British novelist there is' (Observer). He has been shortlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize and longlisted four times, as well as won the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes, and the Richard & Judy Best Read. He was also selected as one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and named by Time as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2007. His previous novels are Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, which was adapted for film in 2012, Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

In 2013, The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice From the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida was published in a translation from the Japanese by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida. It was an immediate bestseller in the UK and later in the US as well. The Bone Clocks is David Mitchell's sixth novel.

Metaphysical thriller, meditation on mortality and chronicle of our self-devouring times, this is the kaleidoscopic new novel from the author of Cloud Atlas. LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014 One drowsy summer's day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for 'asylum'. Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking . . . THE BONE CLOCKS follows the twists and turns of Holly's life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland's Atlantic coast as Europe's oil supply dries up - a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes - daughter, sister, mother, guardian - is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

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