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‘ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANTLY INVENTIVE WRITERS OF THIS, OR ANY, COUNTRY’ INDEPENDENT
The Number One Sunday Times Bestseller
‘Wildly entertaining’
SPECTATOR

‘A stand-out triumph’
SUNDAY TIMES

‘Superb’
LITERARY REVIEW

‘Impressive’
NEW YORKER

‘Highly entertaining’
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

A story of music and dreams, drugs and madness, love and grief, from the acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas
The year is 1967 and word is spreading about a new band on London’s psychedelic scene – an unlikely combination of a female folksinger, a blues bassist, a jazz drummer and an electric guitarist. Strangers to each other and from widely different backgrounds, together they create magic. Meet Utopia Avenue.

This is the story of a unique band’s brief, blazing journey from Soho dives to chart success and on to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was giving way to something much darker – a tale of dreams, drugs, sexuality, madness and grief, and of fame’s pitfalls. Capturing a time when youthful idealism collided with jaded reality, this bewitching novel celebrates the power of music to connect across divides, define an era and thrill the soul.

PRAISE FOR DAVID MITCHELL
‘A thrilling and gifted writer’
FINANCIAL TIMES

‘Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good’
DAILY MAIL

‘Mitchell is, clearly, a genius’
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

‘An author of extraordinary ambition and skill’
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

‘A superb storyteller’
THE NEW YORKER

Publisher Review

A great book! I was completely engrossed for two days. -- Brian Eno With his huge electric brain, Mitchell has written his own solo scenius, one that draws connections between Edo-era Japan and a distant, post-human-collapse future. It's a grand project, brilliantly executed and deeply humanist. Utopia Avenue is the most fun stop along the way and aptly named. * Los Angeles Times * Superb . . . enormous fun . . . a celebratory page-turner. -- Ben Masters * Literary Review * An ambitious, rambunctious, hugely enjoyable tale . . . [it] is filled with sparkling dialogue and has stimulating things to say about creativity, mental health, the effects of domestic violence, the Vietnam War, grief, parental responsibility and what it was perhaps like to be an independent-minded female musician back in the day. Above all, Mitchell pulls off this bold attempt at a novel exploring the undefinable mysteries of music and why music has such an impact on people. -- Martin Chilton * Independent * [Mitchell] tells a linear tale and eschews literary pirouetting to create a set of characters and recreate a period with . . . [such] superb believability . . . Gig upon gig conjures that danger and euphoria of the live experience of amplified sound . . . Mitchell rescues this brief slice of the past, made so poignant because its brilliance was so ephemeral, and brings it into the shimmering present. The result is that Utopia Avenue does what music does: it joins up time. -- Serena Davies * Daily Telegraph * 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. -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times * A book bristling with pleasures . . . An overwhelmingly vivid - and equally exhilarating - portrait of an era when the future seemed likely to be shaped by a combination of young people and music. At the same time, there's a melancholy sense of the transience of this idealism . . . Utopia Avenue confirms that his real talent - perhaps even genius - lies in finding wildly entertaining new ways to tell old truths. -- James Walton * Spectator * Mitchell is expert at excavating the seams of loss, ambition and mere chance that lie under the edifice of fame . . . The reader is impelled from the first by a kind of rushing, gleeful energy . . . a supremely readable novel, if the quality of readability is taken to be one which is difficult to achieve and a relief to encounter. -- Sarah Perry * Guardian * 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. -- Peter Kemp, The Times Books of the Year [A] 1960s music epic -- Justine Jordan, Guardian Books of the Year This lively, colourful read charts the rise of an unlikely bunch of musicians as they head from small-town venues to the glitter and gleam of fame in LA. As Elf, Dean, Griff and guitar genius Jasper de Zoet hit the big time, Utopia Avenue takes you on a wild ride through the tail end of the psychedelic 60s' * Sunday Express, Books of the Year *