Shelfology Book Pairing

A Novel

by David Mitchell

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks | Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in twenty-first-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity. Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

La montaña muerta

by Donnie Eichar

En febrero de 1959 un grupo de nueve jóvenes montañeros murieron misteriosamente en una zona elevada de los Urales rusos conocida como la Montaña Muerta. Los inquietantes aspectos de aquel suceso --las inexplicables lesiones, la evidencia de que los montañeros rasgaron las paredes de la tienda en la que dormían y huyeron sin calzado ni vestimenta adecuados; la última y extraña fotografía que apareció en la cámara de uno de ellos, y las mediciones de radiación en algunas de sus prendas-- han generado durante décadas multitud de especulaciones acerca de lo que realmente pudo haber sucedido.Este apasionante trabajo literario sobre hechos reales indaga en el misterio, aunando el acceso, hasta ahora imposible, a los diarios y fotografías de los protagonistas (muchos de ellos traducidos y reproducidos aquí) y a ciertos registros oficiales raramente consultados, junto a las docenas de entrevistas realizadas y la reconstrucción personal del autor de la fatídica jornada de aquellos muchachos en pleno invierno ruso.Un retrato fascinante de unos jóvenes montañeros en la época soviética que entreteje con maestría sus historias, los esfuerzos de investigación y el estudio de los hechos por parte del autor a la luz actual, y que ofrece una nueva interpretación de lo que sucedió aquella noche en la Montaña Muerta.- Resumen de la editorial.