Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies... A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer bagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of Cloud atlas hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.