Utopia Avenue

'A stand-out triumph' - The Sunday TimesThe spectacular new novel from the bestselling author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS, 'one of the most brilliantly inventive writers of this, or any country' (Independent).Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of.Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent lives and times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on.This is the story of the band's brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker - a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief; of stardom's wobbly ladder and fame's Faustian pact; and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.Above all, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.David Mitchell's seven novels include Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize and lives in Ireland.

What makes it a stand-out triumph is the vibrant flair with which it recreates an era, the acuteness with which it explores composition and performance, and its often witty verbal finesse, A lively, colourful, emotional roller-coaster of a read that lingers long after you turn the final page, A 1960s music epic, It's Daisy Jones & the Six on acid, Charting the rise to stardom of a "psychedelic-folk-rock band" in the late 1960s, this gaudy, swirling concept album of a novel resurrects a flamboyant era with vibrant flair and high-fidelity detail. Amid a whirligig of funny, elating and affecting scenes, the origins, challenges and rewards of creativity are keenly surveyed. David Mitchell's stylish prose makes every page gleam.

David Mitchell is the author of the novels Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, The Bone Clocks, Slade House and Utopia Avenue. He has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize, won the World Fantasy Award, and the John Llewellyn Rhys, Geoffrey Faber Memorial and South Bank Show Literature Prizes, among others. In 2018, he won the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work. His screenwriting credits include the TV shows Pachinko and Sense8, and the movie Matrix: Resurrections.In addition, David Mitchell together with KA Yoshida has translated from Japanese two autism memoirs by Naoki Higashida: The Reason I Jump and Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight.He lives in Ireland.