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Utopia Avenue: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • “Mitchell’s rich imaginative stews bubble with history and drama, and this time the flavor is a blend of Carnaby Street and Chateau Marmont.”—The Washington Post “A sheer pleasure to read . . . Mitchell’s prose is suppler and richer than ever . . . Making your way through this novel feels like riding a high-end convertible down Hollywood Boulevard.”—Slate NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • USA Today • The Guardian • The Independent • Kirkus Reviews • Men’s Health • PopMatters Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967, and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss and guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet, Utopia Avenue embarked on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of Soho, a TV debut on Top of the Pops, the cusp of chart success, glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American sojourn in the Chelsea Hotel, Laurel Canyon, and San Francisco during the autumn of ’68. David Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper; of music, madness, and idealism. Can we really change the world, or does the world change us?
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“A compelling and multitextured look at the 1960s…Evokes the psychedelic age with a bravura mix of telling details and richly composed portraits of iconic figures…It’s a foot-tapping ode to rock music…Mitchell continues to use the rhythms of surface reality to dig much deeper, but without ever losing the beat.”
— Booklist (starred review)
Quotes
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“Fans of Mitchell…have long been aware of his passion for music. That love, deployed with his usual narrative high jinks, is on full display in this story of a London rock band’s rise to fame in the Swinging Sixties.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“A conventional story of a band’s rise turns into a book on another plane entirely.”
— New Yorker -
“In 2020, there is something utopian about the idea of people gathering together to make and record and play music, to create a scenius together. We’ll get back to the garden someday.”
— Los Angeles Times -
“A gritty, richly detailed fable from rock’s golden age…It’s realistic indeed and just the thing for pop music fans of a bygone era that’s still very much with us.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“Mitchell’s magical, much anticipated latest is a rollicking, rapturous tale of 1960s rock ‘n’ roll . . . delivering more fun, more mischief, and more heart than ever before. This is Mitchell at his best.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“Utopia Avenue’s got all the sex, drugs, and broken dreams you want in a rock novel, plus guest appearances by Jagger, Jerry, Janis, and Jim (Morrison).”
— Philadelphia Inquirer
Awards
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An Indie Next List Selection of the Month
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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New York Times bestseller
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About David Mitchell
David Mitchell is the award-winning and bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, named a best book of the year by Time, Washington Post, Financial Times, New Yorker, Globe and Mail, and the New York Times. He has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize five times and hailed as “the novelist who’s shown us fiction’s future” (Washington Post), as well as named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2007. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.
About Ralph Lister
Ralph Lister is an actor, voice actor, and AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. He spent fifteen years in London theater before moving to the United States to focus on film and television. He has held numerous roles in Shakespeare and modern dramas, as well as starring roles in independent films. His voice and character work can be heard in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearland 13 Going On 30. He lives in Los Angeles.