FOLLOWING GHOSTWRITTEN AND number9dream, David Mitchell's third novel is the hugely ambitious Cloud Atlas. Structurally, it consists of six stories, or perhaps should say voices, stitched together into a patchwork whole and forming a meditation on mankind's desire for power and knowledge, and the moral implications of the doctrine of reincarnation.

'The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing' tells of an idealistic young American setting sail for the South Pacific aboard the Prophetess in 1850. His destination is the Chatham Islands, once inhabited solely by the peaceful Moriori but subsequently conquered by their warlike cousins, the Maori (who also wiped out a