David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (Sceptre 1999), won The Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award.

His second novel, number9dream (Sceptre 2001), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 2003 David was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

Cloud Atlas (Sceptre 2004), won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the South Bank Show Literature Prize, and the Best Literary Fiction as well as the Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year prizes in the British Book Awards. It was shortlisted for a further six awards including the Man Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize.

Black Swan Green was published by Sceptre in May 2006. It was nominated for the US-based Quill Awards 2006 and shortlisted in the Novel category for the Costa Book Awards (formerly Whitbread Book Awards) in the same year.

Born in 1969, David grew up in Worcestershire and, after several years teaching in Japan, he now lives in Ireland with his wife and their two children. He most recent novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, is published in May 2010.