10 English Writers Who Became Popular During the Reign of Elizabeth II

10 English Writers Who Became Popular During the Reign of Elizabeth II

It is difficult to imagine this huge loss to British society as the death of Her Majesty on September 8, 2022 at the age of 96. However, her wise and bright reign (1926-2022) gave us writers who glorified old England, subtle British humor and a unique style of polite and even rebellious English prose.

J.K. Rowling

The author of a series (1997-2007) of Harry Potter novels, translated into more than 60 languages, including Russian, needs no introduction, but we will introduce it.

Joan was born on July 31, 1965 in the small town of Yate, Gloucestershire, England. In some sources, you can find information that Joan was born in the town of Chipping Sothebury, where she never actually lived. She herself explains this by the fact that her hometown seemed gray and gloomy, so she decided to decorate her origins a little.

Rowling wrote her first fairy tale when she was about six years old, it was a tale about a rabbit named Rabbit who had measles and was visited by friends with a giant bee named Miss Bee. Exciting, right?

At school, Rowling was quiet, freckled, short-sighted and terribly unathletic, but she loved languages, so she studied French at the University of Exeter. She spent several years studying at the university and working as "the worst secretary in the world".

At the age of 26, she went to Portugal to teach English, where she met her future husband, and three years later gave birth to a daughter, Jessica. Around this time, Rowling wrote the first book about a boy who found out that he was a magician.

After the divorce, the writer returned to Scotland, where she continued to work on the book. The Scottish Arts Council gave her a grant to complete the book, and after a series of rejections, she eventually sold Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to Bloomsbury (UK) for US$4,000. A few months later, Arthur A. Levin/Educational Literature buys the American rights to the book for a sufficient amount. The book was published in the UK in June 1997 (at the time of writing, the book has sold $12,000/$20,000). At that moment, recognition came to her.

Harry Potter wins the British Book of the Year award, and the Smarties Prize. Retitled Harry Potter and the Wizard's Stone, the book was published in the United States in September 1998.

In 1999, Rowling became an international literary sensation when the first three books in the Harry Potter series reached the top three positions on the New York Times bestseller list, achieving similar success in the UK.

Rowling says she wrote Harry Potter when she was very bad and needed to achieve something: "Without challenging myself, I would go crazy." Now the story of Harry Potter and his struggle with the Dark Lord is one of the most popular children's books and already bears the proud title of "children's book of the millennium", although since the fourth book, critics admit that the fairy tale about the boy wizard has become a favorite novel of many adults.

George Orwell

George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair) is as popular a character in English culture today as the Queen of England herself.

The writer was born on June 25, 1903 in Matihari (Bengal). His father was a British colonial employee and served in the customs department. In 1917, Eric received a scholarship and attended Eton College until 1921. From 1922 to 1927 he served in the colonial police in Burma. In 1927, returning home on vacation, he decided to resign and take up writing.

Orwell's early — and not only documentary — books are largely autobiographical. After visiting a shipbuilder in Paris, a hop picker in Kent, and wandering through the English countryside, Orwell obtained material for his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933).

Burmese Days (1934) largely depicted the eastern period of his life. Like the author, the hero of Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) works as a second-hand bookseller, and the heroine of A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) teaches in run-down private schools.

In 1936, the Left Book Club sent Orwell to the north of England to study the life of the unemployed in working-class neighborhoods. The immediate result of this trip was an angry non-fiction book, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), in which Orwell, to the displeasure of his employers, criticized English socialism. He also developed a keen interest in popular culture, which was reflected in his classic essays "The Art of Donald McGill" and "Boys' Weeklies."

The Spanish Civil War caused a second crisis in Orwell's life. Always acting in accordance with his convictions, Eric went to Spain as a journalist, but immediately upon arrival in Barcelona he joined the guerrilla detachment of the Marxist Workers' Party POUM, fought on the Aragon and Teruel fronts, and was seriously wounded. In May 1937, he took part in the Battle of Barcelona on the side of the POUM and the anarchists against the communists. Pursued by the secret police of the communist government, Orwell fled Spain. In his narrative of the trenches of the civil war, Homage to Catalonia (1939), he exposes the Stalinists' intentions to seize power in Spain. Spanish impressions haunted Orwell throughout his life. In his last prewar novel, Coming Up for Air (1940), he denounced the erosion of values and norms in the modern world.

Orwell believed that true prose should be "transparent as glass" and wrote extremely clearly. Examples of what he considered to be the main virtues of prose can be seen in his essay "Shooting an Elephant" and especially in his essay "Politics and the English Language," where he argues that dishonesty in politics and linguistic slovenliness are inextricably linked. Orwell saw his duty as a writer in defending the ideals of liberal socialism and fighting against totalitarian tendencies that threatened the era. In 1945, he wrote Animal Farm, a satire of the Russian Revolution and the collapse of its hopes, in the form of a parable about how animals began to run one farm. His last book was the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a dystopia in which Orwell depicts a totalitarian society with fear and anger. The writer died in London on January 21, 1950 from tuberculosis.

Aldous Huxley

Huxley belonged to the British cultural elite, which produced a number of outstanding scientists, writers, and artists. His father is the writer Leonard Huxley, his paternal grandfather is the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, on his maternal side Huxley is the great-grandson of the historian and educator Thomas Arnold and the great-nephew of the writer Matthew Arnold. Huxley's brother Julian and half-brother Andrew were famous biologists. Huxley's mother died when Aldous was 13 years old. Three years later, he contracted eye inflammation and subsequently his eyesight deteriorated significantly, so he was released from military service during World War I.

Huxley wrote his first novel, which was not published, at the age of 17. He studied literature at Balliol College, Oxford. Already at the age of twenty, Huxley decided to choose writing as a profession. His novels deal with the loss of humanity by society in the process of technological progress (the anti-utopia Brave New World!, Return to a Brave New World). He also touched on pacifist topics.

In 1937, Huxley moved to Los Angeles, California, with his guru Gerald Heard, hoping that the California climate would improve his deteriorating eyesight. It was here that his main creative period began, for which a more detailed consideration of human essence was a new feature.

Huxley met Jeddu Krishnamoorthy in 1938. Under the influence of the latter, he turned to various teachings of wisdom and engaged in mysticism. In 1953, he agreed to participate in an experiment conducted by Humphrey Osmond. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the effects of mescaline on human consciousness. Subsequently, in correspondence with Osmond, the word "psychedelic" was used for the first time to describe the effects of mescaline. The essays "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell" describe the observations and the course of the experiment, which the author repeated about ten times until his death. "The Doors of Perception" became a cult text for many radical intellectuals of the 60s and gave the name to the famous band The Doors. The effect of psychotropic substances affects not only Huxley's work. So, in his last novel "The Island", he described a positive utopia, which was diametrically opposed to his dystopia "Brave New World!".

Aldous died in 1963 in Los Angeles of throat cancer. Before his death, he asked for an intramuscular injection of LSD - 100 mcg. Despite the warnings of the doctors, his wife complied with his request. Shortly before his death, all his manuscripts were burned in a fire in his own house.

Agatha Christie

Agatha Mary Clarissa Mallowen, née Miller, was born on September 15, 1890, in Torquay, Devon. Her parents were wealthy immigrants from the United States, and Agatha received a good home education, in particular music, and only stage fright prevented her from becoming a musician.

During the First World War, the girl worked as a nurse in a hospital; She loved it and described it as "one of the most rewarding jobs a person can do." She also worked as a pharmacist in a pharmacy, which later left an imprint on her work: a total of 83 crimes in her works were committed by poisoning.

Agatha Christie married for the first time on Christmas Day in 1914 to Colonel Archibald Christie, with whom she had been in love for several years - even when he was a lieutenant. This period was the beginning of Agatha Christie's creative path. One day, recovering from an illness, Agatha was bored and did not know what to do with herself. Then her mother advised her to write a story.

Christie wrote her first detective story, The Curious Incident at Styles (published in 1920), as if playfully. The elder sister once expressed doubts that Agatha would be able to write a detective story. A bet in the strict sense of the word was not made, but since her sister was always superior to Agatha in everything, the latter decided to seriously prove to her what she was capable of. However, the birth of the future queen of the detective went unnoticed: about two thousand copies were sold, and the fee was only 25 pounds.

Despite the mutual affection at the beginning, Archibald and Agatha Christie's marriage ended in divorce in 1928. In 1930, while traveling in Iraq, she met her future husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, at excavations in your. He was 15 years younger than her. Agatha Christie said about her marriage that for an archaeologist, a woman should be as old as possible, because then her value increases significantly. Since then, she has periodically spent several months a year in Syria and Iraq on expeditions with her husband. This period of her life was reflected in the autobiographical novel "Tell Me How You Live". In this marriage, Agatha Christie lived for the rest of her life, until her death in 1976.

Thanks to Christie's trips with her husband to the Middle East, the events of several of her works took place there. Other novels (such as And Then There Were None) were set in the town of Torquay or its environs, the place where Christie was born. The 1934 novel Murder on the Orient Express was written at the Hotel Pera Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. Room 411 of the hotel where Agatha Christie lived is now her memorial museum. The Greenway Estate in Devon, which the couple bought in 1938, is protected by the National Trust. Christie often stayed at Abney Hall in Cheshire, which was owned by her brother-in-law, James Watts. At least two of Christie's works were set on this estate: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, a short story also included in the collection of the same name, and the novel After the Funeral.

In 1956, Agatha Christie was awarded the Order of the British Empire, and in 1971, for her achievements in the field of literature, she was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, the holders of which also acquire the noble title "dame", used before the name. Three years earlier, in 1968, the title of Knight of the Order of the British Empire was also awarded to Agatha Christie's husband, Max Mallowan, for his achievements in the field of archaeology.

In 1958, the writer headed the English Detective Club. Between 1971 and 1974, Christie's health began to deteriorate, but despite this, she continued to write. Experts from the University of Toronto studied Christie's writing style during these years and suggested that Agatha Christie suffered from Alzheimer's disease. In 1975, when she was completely weakened, Christie transferred all the rights to her most successful play, The Mousetrap, to her grandson. The writer died on January 12, 1976 at her home in the city of Wallingford, Oxfordshire, after a short cold and was buried in the village of Cholsey. Agatha Christie's autobiography, which the writer graduated in 1965, ends with the words: "Thank you, Lord, for my good life and for all the love that was given to me."

Neil Gaiman

English science fiction writer, author of graphic novels and comics, scripts for films. He was born on 10 November 1960 in Portchester. His father was a businessman, his mother worked as a pharmacist. After graduating from high school in 1977, Gaiman turned down the opportunity to pursue higher education in favor of journalism. However, it took six years before his first professional publication, an interview with Robert Silverberg, appeared in the English edition of Penthouse magazine in 1984. In May of the same year, the author's first story, Featherquest, was published in Imagine. In 1985, Gaiman decided to take up comics. He bought a couple of books on the principles of comic book creation and met Alan Moore, who gave him some practical advice.

Neil's first foray into this field was issue No 488 of 2000AD, published in 1986. For several years, Gaiman improved his skills, along the way publishing the graphic novel Violent Cases (with artist Dave McKean) and the nonfiction book Don't Panic: The Official Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy Companion, an excellent study of the work of the English science fiction writer Douglas Adams. Merrilee Hafetz, Gaiman's literary agent, recalled that Gaiman managed to get a hefty fee for Don't Panic — more than anyone could have imagined — and then he told her that he was now writing comics, but someday he would also write novels.

After three years of practice in other people's projects, Neil Gaiman decides to try his hand at creating an original comic book series. To do this, he takes a rather forgotten hero of horror films of the 30s, and in 1989 the first issue of the Sandman comic book appears. It was published by DC (Detective Comics). Gaiman did not particularly hope for the success of his brainchild, but this was exactly the case when he was wrong. Sandman became incredibly popular, selling thousands (and later millions) of copies. In 1991, the nineteenth issue even won the World Fantasy Award - this was the first time in history that a prestigious literary award was given to a comic.

In 1990, Neil Gaiman, together with Terry Pratchett, released the novel Good Omens, a humorous story about the coming End of the World. Around this time, the super-successful comic book creator began to think about changing his occupation.

In 1997, Gaiman wrote his first book for children, the graphic novel The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, followed by Stardust, a fairy tale story intended for teenagers and awarded the 1999 Mythopoeic Award. Initially, it was published in four parts with illustrations (so the artist Charles Vess is listed as a co-author), and then came out in one volume, this time without pictures.

Soon after moving to America, Gaiman released another novel, American Gods. As a freshly minted immigrant, the writer surprisingly accurately captured his feelings and described them in the fantasy story of the confrontation between the gods of the Old World who emigrated to America and new, recently appeared forces - the gods of television, the Internet, and the telephone. In 2002, another landmark work of the writer was published - the story Coraline, which critics characterized as "Alice in Wonderland, written by Stephen King", and in 2005, Gaiman's new novel Anansi Boys was published, which belongs to the world of American Gods.

William Golding

William was born on September 19, 1911 in the village of St. Columbe Minor (Cornwall). The boy had the idea to start writing at school: at the age of twelve, he conceived his first work of fiction dedicated to the birth of the trade union movement.

In 1930, with a special focus on Latin, William Golding entered Brazenose College, Oxford University, but two years later he changed the program and began to study English and literature. At the same time, Golding not only preserved, but also developed an interest in antiquity; in particular, to the history of primitive societies. It was this interest (according to the critic Bernard S. Oldsey) that determined the ideological basis of his first serious works.

As a student at Oxford, Golding began to write poetry; At first, this hobby served as a kind of psychological counterbalance to the need to immerse himself in the exact sciences. One of his student friends compiled these excerpts into a collection and sent them to Macmillan, which was preparing a special series of publications of poetry by young authors. In the autumn of 1934, Golding unexpectedly received a check for five pounds sterling for the collection, thus learning about the beginning of his literary career. Subsequently, Golding repeatedly expressed regret that this collection saw the light of day; Once he even bought a second-hand copy in order to tear it up and throw it away (only later did he find out that he had destroyed a collector's rarity). However, the poems of the 23-year-old poet later began to be considered by critics as quite "mature and original"; In addition, it was noted that they vividly characterize the range of the author's interests, the central place in which is occupied by the theme of the division of society and criticism of rationalism.

In 1939, Golding left to serve in the Navy. The life experience of the war years, as the writer himself later admitted, deprived him of any illusions about the properties of human nature. After being discharged in September 1945, William Golding returned to teaching at a school in Salisbury; In the same days, he began a serious study of ancient Greek literature. At the same time, Golding returned to his pre-war hobby - literary activity. A writer who had gone through the war was expected to do something based on military experience - a memoir or a novel. In 1952, he began work on a novel entitled Strangers Who Came From Within; In January of the following year, he began to send manuscripts to publishers, receiving rejections over and over again.

In 1953, the novel was read and rejected by publishers for seven months; a reviewer for Faber & Faber found the work "absurd, uninteresting, empty, and boring." A total of twenty-one publishers returned the manuscript to the author. And then Charles Monteith, a former lawyer who had been hired by the publisher as editor a month earlier, almost literally took the novel out of the trash. He persuaded Faber & Faber to buy the work for the ridiculous sum of £60. An allegorical novel about a group of schoolchildren who find themselves on an island during a certain war (most likely unfolding in the near future), in a heavily edited version by Monteith and under the new title Lord of the Flies, was published in September 1954.

The first responses to this work, adventurous in plot, apocalyptic in spirit, were restrained and ambiguous. After its paperback release, the book became a bestseller in the UK.

In the end, Lord of the Flies was comparable in terms of interest from analysts to the two main books by J. Orwellian. All his life, Golding considered his most famous novel to be "boring and raw," and his language to be "schoolboy." The fact that Lord of the Flies is considered a modern classic was not taken very seriously by him, and he regarded the money he made from it as something tantamount to "winning at Monopoly". The writer sincerely did not understand how this novel could leave in the shadow his stronger books: "The Heirs", "The Spire" and "Martin the Thief".

At the end of his life, Golding could not bring himself to even reread the manuscript in its original, unedited version, fearing that he would be upset to such an extent "that he could do something terrible to himself."

In 1983, William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. For many, it was a surprise that Golding was preferred to another English candidate, Graham Greene. Moreover, one of the members of the Swedish Academy, literary critic Arthur Lundqvist, voting against the election of Golding, said that this author was a purely English phenomenon and his works "are not of significant interest."

«His books excite and captivate. They can be read with pleasure and benefit, without making much effort... But at the same time, they aroused extraordinary interest among professional literary critics, who discovered a huge layer of complexities and ambiguities in Golding's work," the Swedish Academy said in an official statement.

In 1992, Golding learned that he was suffering from malignant melanoma; At the end of December, the tumor was removed, but it became clear that the writer's health was undermined. At the beginning of 1993, he began work on a new book, which he did not have time to complete. The novel Double Language, a relatively small work that tells (in the first person) the story of the soothsayer Pythia, was published in June 1995, two years after the author's death. William Golding died suddenly of a massive heart attack at his home in Perranauortol on June 19, 1993. He was buried in the church cemetery in Bowerchock, and a memorial service was served in Salisbury Cathedral under the very spire that inspired one of his most famous works.

Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John Pratchett, better known as Terry Pratchett, was born on April 28, 1948. The most popular is the cycle of satirical fantasy about the Discworld. The total circulation of his books is about 50 million copies.

In February 2009, Pratchett was made a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II of England, while remaining an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

In 1982, the New English Library, which had previously published Pratchett's novels in paperbacks, refused to cooperate with the author due to poor sales. Colin Smythe managed to interest Diana Pearson of Corgi in the publication, and in 1983 The Colour of Magic, the first novel in the Discworld series, was published. Pearson organized a six-episode series on BBC radio in the program Woman's Hour, which was a resounding success.

In 1986, Pratchett's new novel, The Light Fantastic, was published, and a contract was signed for the publication of Terry's subsequent books in hardcover as well. In 1987, after the third Locus Award-nominated Locus Award novel Equal Rites appeared, Colin Smythe received a call from the New English Library asking if the rights to publish Pratchett's books were still free. "Of course they're late," smiled Smythe. In the same year, 1987, after finishing the novel Mort, Terry Pratchett decided to devote all his time to writing. Pratchett's books quickly became bestsellers, gaining more and more popularity.

In 1996, the novels Maskerade and Interesting Times hit the top ten bestsellers in the UK. Published in 1995, Soul Music was at the top of the list of best-selling paperbacks for four weeks. Reaper Man was the eighth fastest-selling book in the UK over the past five years.

The books "Hogfather" and "Maskerade" topped the bestseller lists for two weeks in both paperback and hardcover at the same time. The book "The Last Continent" stayed at number one for eight weeks.

In 1998, Terry Pratchett was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to literature.

Over time, Terry Pratchett stated that he would like to try something new, different from the Discworld. His fans did not approve of the idea of moving away from the Discworld, so it is believed that the writer "cheated a little" by launching a subseries of "Flat World" novels, designed for children and teenagers.

On December 13, 2007, it became known that Terry Pratchett had a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, and in August 2009, he wrote an open letter to the Daily Mail about euthanasia. On June 13, 2011, a BBC documentary titled Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die was released, in which Terry Pratchett explains his choice, covers in detail the problem of public opinion about euthanasia, its legal status in different countries and shows the process of assisted suicide on the example of a terminally ill person. By 2012, Pratchett's condition had worsened, and he had difficulty writing and reading, but he still continued to work, dictating works to his assistant Rob Wilkins or using speech recognition programs. Terry Pratchett passed away on March 12, 2015. Information about the death of the writer was confirmed by his publisher, and a series of tweets appeared on the writer's Twitter page, making up his latest story, according to which Terry was followed by Death from his novels. The last tweet is extremely concise and sums up Pratchett's entire life: "The end." 

C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis was an English and Irish writer, scholar and theologian; a prominent representative of the Oxford literary group "Inklings". He was born on 29 November 1898 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of a solicitor, but lived most of his life in England. After graduating from school in 1917, he entered University College, Oxford, but soon dropped out and was drafted into the British army as a junior officer. After being wounded in the First World War in 1918, he was demobilized and returned to the university, where he completed his studies.

In 1919, under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton, he published a collection of poems Spirits in Bondage.

In 1923 he received a bachelor's degree, later a master's degree and became a teacher of philology. From 1925 to 1954 he taught English language and literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and worked for the BBC's religious broadcasting service during World War II.

From 1933 to 1949, a circle of friends gathered around Lewis, which became the basis of the literary discussion group "The Inklings", whose members included J.R.R. Tolkien, Warren Lewis, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Dr. Robert Howard, Owen Barfield, Weville Coghill and others.

In 1950-1955, the cycle "The Chronicles of Narnia" was published, which brought Lewis world fame. In 1954, he moved to Cambridge, where he taught English language and literature at Magdalena College, and in 1955 he became a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1963, Lewis stopped teaching due to heart problems and kidney disease. He died on November 22 of the same year. He remained in his position at Cambridge until his death and was elected an honorary fellow of Magdalena College. He was buried in the courtyard of the Holy Trinity Church in Oxford.

Erica Leonard James

Erica Leonard James, better known by her pseudonym E. L. James, is an English writer, author of the erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey and the continuation of this series. Erica Leonard was born in 1963. She grew up in Buckinghamshire, England, and studied history at the University of Kent. Then she worked as an assistant at a television school and as an administrator. At first, James wrote fan fiction under the nickname Snowqueen's Icedragon. In the end, her writings resulted in the novel Fifty Shades of Grey. Since childhood, she dreamed of writing books that would be impossible not to fall in love with, but first she had to focus on her family and career. As a result, she plucked up the courage to write her first novel. Originally conceived as fan fiction for Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey is an erotic novel, the first volume of a trilogy. It was published in June 2011 by The Writer's Cofee Shop.

The second book, 50 Shades Darker, was published in September 2011, and the final, third part, 50 Shades Lighter, was published in January 2012.

The novel is set in modern Seattle. The trilogy tells the story of the relationship between college graduate Ana Steele and young businessman Christian Grey.

In 2015, she published the bestselling novel Grey, where Christian told about the relationship between the characters. And in 2017, the sequel to Gray was released - the novel Even Darker, which became incredibly popular. James's books have been published in 50 languages and have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. The Times magazine included E. L. James in the list of the most influential people in the world, and Publishers Weekly named him the person of the year. Fifty Shades of Grey remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 133 consecutive weeks. Fifty Shades Freed won the 2012 Goodrid Choice Avods Award, and Fifty Shades of Grey was voted on the 2018 Great American Readings list of the 100 Best Books. The novel "Even Darker" was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award in 2019. Erica James is one of the producers of the films based on the Fifty Shades trilogy. The box office amounted to more than a billion dollars. The third part, Fifty Shades Freed, won the Audience Award in the Drama category in 2018.

David Mitchell

David Mitchell was born in January 1969 in Southport (Merseyside, England). He studied at the University of Kent and received a degree in English and American literature. He lived in Sicily, then moved to Hiroshima (Japan), where he taught English to Japanese students. Eight years later, David returned to England with his wife Keiko and their two children. Writing only a few books, Mitchell made a huge impression on the modern literary scene.

His debut novel The Literary Ghost, published in 1999, was able to compete with the books of the universally recognized pillars of English prose - Antonia Byatt, Lawrence Norfolk and Rachel Cask, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (as the best English book written by an author under 35 years old), and was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award. Moreover, unlike many aspiring authors who build the plot of their first books on speculation around their personal experiences, David managed to create an incredibly convincing narrative, which is a fusion of stories that take place simultaneously in different parts of the world and are told by completely different people. Such a breadth of views and manner of presentation of the author is strikingly different from modern trends in English literature, which seeks isolation and concentration of attention on the internal microcosm of the country.

Mitchell's second novel "Dream No 9" (number9dream) was published in 2001, in this book the author decided not to resort to a mixture of a wide range of genres and styles, but focused on creating a single storyline, colorfully telling about the search for his father by a Japanese teenager in modern Tokyo. The novel was nominated for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the most prestigious English Man Booker Award.

In his 2004 book Cloud Atlas, Mitchell decided to return to the tradition of his first novel's narrative and the variation of genres from science fiction to historical sketches. The awards were not long in coming, and the novel received the British Book Literary Fiction Award, was named the British Book Awards Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year and was nominated for the Booker Prize, and the author himself received the title of "Best Young British Writer" from the influential Granta association.

In 2006, a new novel by David, Black Swan Green, was published, which was nominated for the Costa Novel, Quill Book and Commonwealth Writers Prize (in the category "Best Book in Eurasia"). Now David Mitchell lives with his family in the city of Cork (Ireland) and writes a new book - a historical novel in which he plans to compare Japan under the rule of the shoguns and Napoleonic Europe. In 2013, David and his wife Keiko translated The Reason I Jump, a 13-year-old Japanese autistic man, into English. The fact is that one of the couple's children suffers from autism.

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