Temporary Future: The Fiction of David Mitchell

David Mitchell has emerged as one of the leading figures of the current "under-50" generation of contemporary British writers and is rapidly taking his place amongst British novelists with the gravitas of an Ishiguro or a McEwan. Written for a wide constituency of scholars, students, and readers of contemporary literature, A Temporary Future: The Fiction of David Mitchell explores Mitchell's primary concerns-including those of identity, history, language, imperialism, childhood, the environment, ethnicity-across the six novels published thus far, as well as his protean ability to write in multiple and diverse genres. It places Mitchell in the tradition of Murakami, Sebald, Ishiguro, and Rushdie-writers whose work explore narrative in an age of globalization and cosmopolitanism. O'Donnell traces the through-lines of Mitchell's work from Ghostwritten to The Bone Clocks and, with a chapter on each of the six novels, tracks the evolution of Mitchell's fictional project. The concluding chapter addresses Mitchell as a writer of the future.