Cloud Atlas: In Motion

A 19th-century notary is shipwrecked in the South Pacific and a genetically engineered clone visits a 2044 Korea in this interactive series capturing the genre-defying journey of David Mitchell’s bestselling novel, Cloud Atlas. Illustrated by Kimberley Salt, who submitted the winning artwork for Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore in our Drawing Illustration competition, the intricate silhouettes visually interpret Cloud Atlas via its six central characters. “What struck me about the book was the unusually told spectrum of events," explains the New York-based illustrator. "There was this microscopic, detailed view of the individual, in contrast to the wholeness and continuity of the tales of disparate people." Shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker prize, the mythical saga of Cloud Atlas caught the eye of The Matrix trilogy directors Andy and Lana Wachowski, who enlisted German filmmaker and close friend Tom Tykwer to help bring to life Mitchell’s post-apocalyptic themes. The forthcoming picture, shown at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, sees a Hollywood cast including Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks and Zhou Xun intersect through preserved letters, historic journals and unfinished manuscripts. In Salt’s drawings, the characters time travel through a labyrinth of color-saturated mini novellas.

The film Cloud Atlas is due for release in the US on October 26.