David Mitchell (author)
David Mitchell | |
|---|---|
| David Mitchell at Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA), 27 April 2006 David Mitchell at Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA), 27 April 2006 | |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | University of Kent |
| Period | 1999-present |
| Notable works | Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green |
| Notable awards | John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 1999 Ghostwritten |
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David Mitchell (born 12 January 1969) is an English novelist. He has written five novels, two of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Biography
David Mitchell was born in Southport, Merseyside, in England, raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, and educated at the University of Kent, studying for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. 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. After another stint in Japan, he currently lives in Ireland with his wife Keiko and their two children.
In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote:[1]
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 6 years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself.
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. In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.[2]
Mitchell's American editor at Random House is novelist David Ebershoff. He lists John Banville, Muriel Spark, Haruki Murakami, Paul Auster, Don DeLillo, Russell Hoban, Italo Calvino, Peter Carey, George Orwell, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Richard Wright, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Ursula K. Le Guin among his many literary influences.
Novels
- Ghostwritten, 1999
- number9dream, 2001
- Cloud Atlas, 2004
- Black Swan Green, 2006
- The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, 2010
Further reading
- Mitchell, D. (2003). "January Man". Best of Young British Novelists 2003. Granta. Retrieved 2007-09-24.
- Linklater, A. (2007-09-22). "The author who was forced to learn wordplay". Life & Style. London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-09-23.
- Mitchell, D. (2009): The Massive Rat [1] (Short Story published in "The Guardian" 01/08/2009)
- Mitchell, D. (2009): Character Development [2] (Short Story published in "The Guardian" 02/09/2009, taken from Amnesty International's anthology "Freedom")
References
- ^ Bold Type: Essay by David Mitchell
- ^ "The Time 100". Time. 2007-05-03. Retrieved 2010-05-01.
External links
- The Paris Review Interview
- Visit David Mitchell's official website: [3]
- Profile at the official Man Booker Prize site
- David Michell - How I Write, Untitled Books, May 2010
- "Get Writing: Playing With Structure" by David Mitchell at BBC.co
- "Character Development" by David Mitchell, a short story from The Guardian (2009)
- "David Mitchell, the Experimentalist", New York Times Magazine, June 2010